Proximity to GE Schenectady is keyBy Peter A. Buxbaum, AJOTGE Energy, a division of General Electric, is headquartered in Schenectady, N.Y., and Schenectady is a short half hour drive to the state capital of Albany in upstate New York. Since GE Energy is a major exporter of steam generators and related equipment it comes as no surprise that the port of Albany should benefit from the project cargo which those exports represent. In fact, most of the cargo handled at the Federal Marine Terminal in the port of Albany is project cargo, and most of that comes from GE Energy. “Sixty to seventy percent of our business involves project cargo,” said Ring. “Over half of our business right now is GE.” The terminal also handles steel, wood pulp, and wind generation components, a sector which Ring excepts to grow. There are several wind generation projects scheduled for upstate New York. “Ninety-nine percent of the cargo related to GE are exports,” said Bill Ring, the terminal’s general manager. “We just finished up three large shipments to India, including one, at just under 8,000 cube, which was one of the largest ever shipped out of GE. Other recent shipments have gone to Saudi Arabia, elsewhere in the the in Middle East, and to Peru. We have several upcoming shipments going to Korea.” All in all, a majority of Federal Marine Terminals’ business in Albany relates to General Electric. FMT handles an average of two or three shiploads a month of project cargo on behalf of GE. Some of the cargo, also handled, by FMT, is barged down the Hudson River to the port of New York and New Jersey, and loaded there on oceangoing vessels. Alstom Power, a developer of power systems technologies, Nooter/Eriksen, a supplier of heat recovery steam generators, and Foster Wheeler, an industrial engineering company, are some other of FMT’s customers in the port of Albany. FMT has handled import projects on behalf of Alstom and Nooter/Eriksen, components for heat recovery generators that were to be assembled in upstate New York. “Those components are not so much heavy, but they are large,” said Ring. “They take up a lot of volume and take a lot of time to handle.” GE Energy also sometimes provides import work for FMT. Generator components are shipped to GE Energy in Schenectady by way of the the port of Albany, from places like Japan and Korea, for refurbishing. Those same components are later shipped out, typically by being floated by barge down the Hudson to the port of New York and New Jersey, from there to be returned to their points of origin. “It doesn’t happen that often,” said Ring, “but on occasion GE brings in parts from overseas for finishing at the plant. Those are usually barged to the terminal and then railed to the plant.” The mainstay of FMT’s project business, the GE exports, include steam generators that can weigh as much as 250 metric tons, rotors and turbines that typically weight over 100 tons, and accessories for those systems which can range form 100-pound boxes to 40-ton pieces. “The GE generators are the heaviest pieces we have handled,” said Ring. “They are really off the charts.” The heavier pieces are normally transported by rail from the GE plant in Schenectady, or from GE vendors, to the port of Albany through a rail service provided by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Some of the smaller pieces are trucked in. Once in the port district, the rail cars are pulled onto the dock by the Albany Port Railroad, a joint venture of the Canadian Pacific and CSX, the other Class One railroad serving the port. The GE vendors feeding shipments to the port of Albany are typically located in the Northeast United States and Canada, according to Ring, sometimes in the Midwest. The port of has 3,000 feet of berth space dedicated to project cargo and on-dock rail service which allows these large and heavy components to be transported right up to the side of the ship without having to be re-handled. From there, the ships’ cranes normally pull the cargo off the rail car