South Jersey Port Corp. readies for big boost with new terminal

It’s already shaping up to be a happy and prosperous 2017 for the South Jersey Port Corp., which looks by the end of January to have opened the initial phase of what is being touted as the first major marine terminal on the Delaware River in more than 50 years. With the Paulsboro Marine Terminal coming online, anticipated to be handling 1.5 million tons a year of Russian steel imports, SJPC expects to see a boost of about 60 percent in annual total tonnage activity across its docks, according to SJPC officials. “A significant milestone is getting Paulsboro operational,” SJPC’s executive director, Jay Jones, understatedly told the American Journal of Transportation. “We’re adding a whole new terminal and its capability and capacity,” Jones said, noting that the Paulsboro facility has been developed specifically for handling the single commodity. “It will be an efficient, responsive, fluid operation.” Located in Paulsboro, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia International Airport, the new terminal is being operated by Holt Cargo Systems Inc., part of a family of Holt companies engaged for decades in facilities on both New Jersey and Pennsylvania sides of the river. The $175 million first phase of the Paulsboro Marine Terminal is augmented by rail infrastructure developed through a $21 million federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant. Steel slab from Russia’s NLMK Group is to constitute the first shipment in and out of the terminal, according to Jones. The product is to arrive via oceangoing vessels and depart on unit trains en route to users, primarily in Pennsylvania. With the initial facility occupying about 50 acres of an overall 200-acre site, plans already are moving forward for a second phase at Paulsboro, calling for two additional ship berths and one barge berth to join the first phase’s single 850-foot-long ship berth. Jones said officials are hard at work pinning down funding for the future phase, including via an SJPC marine revenue bond. He estimated the price tag for the second phase at between $200 million and $275 million. On a 360-acre tract just south of the Paulsboro Marine Terminal, a private entity, Delaware River Partners LLC, is hoping to have operational before the end of 2017 a multiuse terminal handling energy commodities, industrial products, automobiles, perishables and/or dry goods. Plans are advancing for that site to be added as a general-purpose zone site to Foreign-Trade Zone No. 142, for which SJPC is grantee. Meanwhile, SJPC’s two longtime Camden dock facilities – the Joseph A. Balzano Marine Terminal and Broadway Marine Terminal – continue to bustle with activity, annually combining to handle about 2.5 million tons of breakbulk cargo. The cocoa bean import season is under way at Balzano docks, with product destined for nearby plants of such familiarly tasty chocolate names as Hershey, Mars and Blommer. At the Broadway Marine Terminal, Holtec International, an energy industry company specializing in parts for nuclear reactors, with no relation to the Holt family enterprises, is building a 50-acre manufacturing and training facility. Also at the Broadway terminal are operations of Joseph Oat Corp., a maker of pressure vessels, heat exchangers, and radioactive fuel and waste containers. Federal funding also is playing a substantial role in security upgrades at the Camden terminals, with a fiscal 2016 U.S. Department of Homeland Security port grant of $121,500 being augmented by a $40,500 local match to buttress video surveillance capabilities at the Broadway and Balzano terminals.