The Port of Virginia posted another solid year in 2024, handling over 3.5 million TEUs. But the authority has its eyes on the future as more infrastructure projects come online.

ARC Group delivers tunnel boring machine Mary to Norfolk from Europe.

The Port of Virginia over the last dozen years has been without much fanfare improving efficiency and increasing capacity and living up to its moniker of being “America’s Most Modern Gateway”.

The Virginia Port Authority (VPA) owns, and is responsible for the operations and security of, three marine terminals: Norfolk International Terminals (NIT), Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT), and Newport News Marine Terminal (NNMT), and an inland intermodal facility, the Virginia Inland Port (VIP), located in Front Royal, Virginia. The Authority is also responsible for the operations and security of two leased marine terminals: Virginia International Gateway (VIG), located in Portsmouth, Virginia and Richmond Marine Terminal (RMT), located in Richmond, Virginia on the James River. These facilities handle a wide range of import and export cargoes including containerized, breakbulk and ro/ro cargoes. Virginia International Terminals, Inc. (VIT), the Virginia Port Authority’s non-stock,non-profit affiliate, has operated the Port of Virginia since its creation in 1981 as an autonomous agency by the state of Virginia.

With the operations of the various terminals placed under the VIT, the authority is in the unusual position of being a port operating authority (under the Commonwealth of Virginia) which in North American port circles is sometimes referred to as the “Virginia Model”. Most of the North American larger ports operate as “landlord” leasing out their facilities to third part operations, often well-known terminal operating companies.

Cargo Flows

This arrangement has certainly worked in Virginia’s case. In the calendar year 2024, the POV notched a throughput of 3,523,512 TEUs which makes it the fifth straight year the port broke the 3 million TEU threshold. The 2024 tally also includes 1,840,561 export TEUs, making it one of the top container export ports in North America. And the POV ranks third on the East Coast, behind only the ports of New York/New Jersey and Savannah, Georgia.

Like many ports, the trading partners reflect the changing geo-political nature of trade. On the export side of the ledger, India is far and away the largest trade partner accounting for 11,869,000 tons of freight. The Netherlands, Brazil and China each notched over 5,000,000 tons. On the import side of the ledger, China is still the leader at 2,321,000 tons but India isn’t far behind at 1,735,000 tons followed by Germany at 1,086,000 tons.

The freight tonnage is also reflected in the trade lanes. On the export side, North Europe leads the way with 14,507,000 tons while “India & Others” is 12,423,000 tons and Asia Northeast 9,515,000 tons. Trade lane tonnage on the import side is considerably more with North Europe at 3,669,000 tons and with Asia Northeast following closely with 3,062,000 tons.

POV Projects

Many of the POV’s improvements fall under the authority’s Gateway Investment Program. The $1.48 billion plan includes investments in such activities as channel dredging, NIT upgrades, Central Rail Yard expansion and Offshore Wind implementation (the transformation of Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT) into an offshore wind energy hub).

In some respects, the channel dredging project is the lead for the program as all other projects fall in place with the completion of dredging — which falls under the program monicker of “Wider, Deeper, Safer initiative.” The goal of the $450 million project was to make Norfolk Harbor, and its ocean approaches the deepest (55-feet deep) and widest on the US East Coast, enabling the simultaneous two-way traffic of ultra-large container vessels (ULVCs) — containerships carrying over 20,000 TEUs and around 1,300 feet in length and a breadth of 200 feet and a draft of around 50-feet.

In October, the main portion of the channel dredging was complete and the POV became the port with the widest and deepest channel on the East Coast, opening the doors to handling ULVCs both inbound and outbound simultaneously from the container terminals, vastly improving vessel turnaround times.

Although not directly part of the same port project the State’s Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) Expansion Project, which includes widening the current four-lane segments along almost 10 miles of the I-64 corridor in Norfolk and Hampton, with new twin tunnels across the harbor, will like the channel dredging, also contribute to greater efficiency in moving containers to and from the terminals.

Additionally, in August of 2024 the POV completed an $83 million expansion of Norfolk International Terminals (NIT) central railyard to accommodate 1.1 million rail TEUs annually, which effectively doubled the port’s annual rail lift capacity.

Among the other projects underway is the $650 million optimization of the North Berth of NIT. The project will create capacity for an additional 1.4 million TEUs with the installation of four new electric ship-to-shore cranes, bringing the port’s complement of ship-to-shore cranes to 33, including four replacement cranes that went into service at VIG. NIT’s container stack yard also will be reconfigured, supported by semiautomated stacking cranes. When the project is finished in summer 2027, NIT will have capacity of 3.6 million TEUs, while the port overall will have a total capacity of 5.8 million TEUs.

The expansion will also provide the North Berth with a valuable “flexibility” to adjust to TEU volume fluctuations, which has become a characteristic of the current tariff epoch in trade.

A RailGreen Corridor – A Novel Approach

In May the POV and Norfolk Southern announced they were collaborating on a new RailGreen program that would reduce supply chain emissions for shippers. This novel emission reduction program using freight rail, offers shippers looking to enhance their sustainability programs, an opportunity to use a “RailGreen Corridor to move their freight. The program involves using Norfolk Southern’s daily service to and from The Virginia Inland Port (VIP) — the POV’s intermodal terminal in Front Royal, Virginia. The VIP terminal connects to the POV’s terminals in Norfolk Harbor. Shippers using Norfolk Southern’s lane can participate in RailGreen and reduce emissions.

The RailGreen works by taking advantage of Norfolk Southern’s low-carbon biofuel use in locomotives which generates RailGreen certificates. A customer purchases the certificates to apply to their supply chain emissions. In turn as the customers purchase the certificates, Norfolk Southern acquires more biofuel.

The RailGreen addresses some of the harder problems for shippers trying to implement a sustainability plan. A company’s supply chain emissions are the hardest to track and tackle and RailGreen’s transparency makes it possible to more easily address SCOPE 3 emissions. The key to the program is the blockchain-backed Environmental Attribute Certificates from 123Carbon – a leading, independent book-and-claim platform that ensures each metric ton of reduced emission is tracked to avoid double counting. Third-party validation verifies carbon-reducing activities against international standards.

Collectively, this gives the system the necessary transparency and ease of implementation that shippers are looking for to help them with their sustainability programs.