The Port of Charleston’s newest terminal welcomed its first ship on Friday, making the Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal in North Charleston the first container terminal to open in the United States since 2009, according to the South Carolina State Ports Authority.
Hapag-Lloyd’s Yorktown Express docked at about 3 p.m., The Post and Courier reported. The ship had sailed from London last week, and the new terminal was its first U.S. East Coast stop, according to the newspaper.
Ship-to-shore cranes unloaded about 1,000 containers from the vessel, many of them holding parts for BMW and other companies in the state’s auto industry, according to The Post and Courier. The ship was scheduled to leave around 5 a.m. Saturday for Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“SC Ports is extremely proud to open the first container terminal in the U.S. since 2009 in South Carolina. This took years of effort by our team and project partners,” Jim Newsome, president and CEO of the authority, known as SC Ports, said in a statement.
The terminal started operating March 30, when its first container arrived, the authority said. That box was filled with car parts by BMW’s plant in Spartanburg County, put on a train at the authority’s inland port in Greer, and trucked from a Norfolk Southern rail yard in North Charleston to the new terminal, The Post and Courier reported.
A soft opening
The Yorktown Express, built in 2002, is much smaller than the ships the terminal was designed for. It is about 797 feet long and can carry the equivalent of about 3,200 20-foot containers, while the terminal was built for 1,200-foot ships that carry up to 20,000, according to The Post and Courier.
“It was a soft opening,” Barbara Melvin, the authority’s chief operating officer, told the newspaper. “We did that on purpose. With the supply chain today, you can’t cause any hiccups. There’s enough going on without that.”
With ports around the country backed up, Melvin told Live 5 News that Charleston could offer ships a berth without a wait.
“We’re seeing congestion in ports all across the country, here we are in South Carolina opening a new terminal with a berth and allowing for ships to come here, no congestion, no wait,” she said.
SC Ports handled an all-time cargo record in March, with loaded imports up 50% from a year earlier, the authority said.
What $1 billion buys
The first phase cost $1 billion and adds 700,000 TEUs, or 20-foot equivalent units, of yearly capacity to the Port of Charleston, according to the authority.
It has one 1,400-foot berth that can handle a 20,000-TEU vessel. Five electric ship-to-shore cranes with 169 feet of lift height work the berth, and 25 hybrid rubber-tired gantry cranes move boxes around a 47-acre container yard, the authority said. A six-acre area with six-story racks handles refrigerated cargo.
At full buildout, the $2 billion terminal will have three berths on 286 acres and add 2.4 million TEUs of yearly capacity, doubling the port’s current capacity, SC Ports said.
The project has been 20 years in the making. The authority filed permits in 2003 for a terminal on the south end of the former Navy base, received approvals in 2007 and prepared the site from 2007 through 2018, according to SC Ports. Construction stalled when the Great Recession cut the port’s cargo by about a third, The Post and Courier reported. Building the terminal itself began in 2018.
The state Department of Transportation built a dedicated Port Access Road connecting the terminal to Interstate 26, the authority said.
The terminal is named for state Sen. Hugh K. Leatherman, whom The Post and Courier has described as one of the port’s biggest benefactors.
“It gives me immense pride to see the Leatherman Terminal begin operations, the culmination of 20 years of hard work,” Leatherman said in the authority’s statement.
Gov. Henry McMaster called the terminal “an investment in the future of South Carolina that will spur economic development, create jobs, and further our state’s position as an international business destination for years to come.”
The union dispute
The opening comes amid a fight between SC Ports and the International Longshoremen’s Association over who will operate the terminal’s cranes.
A contract between the union and shipping lines says any new terminal at a state-owned port must use union members to run cranes and other lift equipment, The Post and Courier reported in March. At Charleston’s terminals, that work is done by SC Ports employees who do not belong to a union, and shipping lines had said they wouldn’t use the Leatherman Terminal until the issue was resolved, according to the newspaper.
A regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled March 17 that the contract provision amounts to an illegal boycott of SC Ports, the newspaper reported. The case was set to go before an administrative law judge on May 4, and the board issued a stipulation that lets the terminal open while the case is pending, the paper reported.
“The Leatherman Terminal is critically needed right now in view of the considerable congestion existing in U.S. ports today,” Newsome said in a statement in March. “The time has come to begin operations.”
SC Ports is also deepening Charleston Harbor and expects to reach 52 feet this year, which the authority says will make it the deepest harbor on the East Coast.
