Gulf Ports Expanding Their Way To Bigger Profits

FREEPORT, Texas — Located in southeast Texas where the Brazos River empties into the Gulf of Mexico, Port Freeport is one of the ports best poised to accommodate bigger ships crossing the enlarged Panama Canal, officials say.

It is one of several ports that have embarked on massive expansion projects in recent years, anticipating more traffic and larger vessels coming through the canal.

"The canal's expansion is a big part of our growth," Cecil Booth, project engineer at Port Freeport, told FreightWaves during a recent tour of the facilities. "The ships that are sailing on the sea now are getting bigger, with deeper drafts, longer and wider. So in order to accommodate the deeper draft ships, Port Freeport elected to deepen the channel and widen the channel."

The canal expansion, completed in 2016, has opened the Gulf of Mexico to Neopanamax ships, as well as very large crude carriers (VLCCs), capable of hauling millions of barrels of crude oil.

Neopanamax ships are next-generation ships built to use the widened Panama Canal. That allows increased cargo and more container revenue for U.S. ports. 

Port Freeport has several major projects underway, including the channel-deepening and an expansion of its container terminal.

"Shipping has become a big containerized process all over the world. To be able to compete in the container market, Port Freeport elected to expand their container port," Booth said.

Other ports across the Gulf Coast aren't resting on their laurels either. Ports from Brownsville, Texas, to New Orleans, to Mobile, Alabama, are expanding and will spend about $5.4 billion on expansion projects by 2027.

The Port of New Orleans (Port NOLA) is in the planning stages to build the $1.5 billion Louisiana International Terminal, which will be capable of handling 2 million twenty-foot equivalent units annually.

"This is the largest project and biggest investment Port NOLA has undertaken in dollars," Jessica Ragusa, spokeswoman for the port, told FreightWaves. 

The Louisiana International Terminal's plans call for a 350-acre container terminal with a 3,500-linear-foot wharf on more than 1,000 acres of developable greenfield property "to serve the industry's largest container vessels," Ragusa said.

"The Panama Canal expansion as well as larger ship sizes were big reasons in deciding to expand Port NOLA downriver from our current container terminal facility uptown," Ragusa said. "Container cargo vessels are getting larger and require deep water and enough space for ships to dock."

The Louisiana International Terminal project will include adding four ship-to-shore gantry cranes that are being fabricated in China currently.

"With the new cranes, the facility will have a total of nine container gantry cranes. Our container business has doubled in 10 years and market demand continues to grow," Ragusa said. "The business is ours to lose to other states if we don't provide the infrastructure necessary to compete in the future."

While Freeport is a small, sleepy Texas town known for its beaches, saltwater fishing and chemical refineries, the port has several big advantages over many other larger installations — deep water close to shore and a shorter distance to the open waters of the Gulf, Booth said.

Freeport is located about 60 miles south of Houston.

"From dock to deep water, the distance is around 5 miles, so it's very, very close," Booth said. "It's close enough where ships are not stacked up waiting for their turn to get in or waiting your turn to get out. It's a short turnaround to get into open water and go on, whereas some of these other ports are way upriver or way up the channel."

Port Freeport currently is the 25th-ranked seaport in the U.S. by total trade and 54th overall among the nation's roughly 450 airports, seaports and border crossings, according to U.S. Census Bureau data analyzed by WorldCity.

Port Freeport was the fourth-ranked seaport in Texas in May, with $1.5 billion in two-way trade, behind Port Houston ($14.2 billion), Port of Corpus Christi ($4.3 billion) and Port of Port Arthur ($1.7 billion).

Port Freeport was founded in 1925 and generates an economic impact of $46 billion annually. Over 900 vessels per year call the private and public terminals in the port, handling over 17 million tons of cargo.

The port offers container, general cargo, breakbulk and roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) services. Its customers include Atlantic Container Lines, AMPORTS, BASF, Chiquita Fresh, Dole Fresh Fruit, Dow Chemical Co., Exxon Mobil, Freeport LNG, Phillips 66, Riviana Foods, Tenaris and Vulcan Materials Co, among others. 

Ro-ro cargo has been one of Port Freeport's fastest growing segments over the last several years. The port has seen a $400 million increase in automobile imports since 2018, and has been exporting close to $1.5 billion in autos assembled in Texas annually.

New cars arrive from Arlington, Texas, and are exported mostly to the Middle East. New imports arrive primarily from South Korea and India. Used cars are shipped off to West Africa, Booth said.

"We get upwards of three ro-ro ships a week," Booth said. "That's the reason we decided to put an additional railroad dock out here, because we need to be able to handle more than one ship at a time."

In April, Port Freeport began the $324.5 million Freeport Harbor Channel Improvement Project, a channel-deepening initiative that will take about five years to complete.

Last year, Port Freeport also began a $130 million project to expand its Velasco Container Terminal. The terminal expansion involves building 1,600 feet of new berths, including one (Berth 8) that will be dredged to 51 feet to allow larger container vessels to call the port.

McCarthy Building Cos. is constructing the Velasco Terminal Expansion project. Fitz O'Donnell, vice president of marine/industrial for McCarthy's Houston office, said marine construction projects have become more expensive and complex over time.

"Ten years ago, we paid $85 a cubic yard for ready-mix concrete," O'Donnell said. "These days, we might be paying $130 a cubic yard. That's just what the industry does. We use a lot of steel in these projects, which is a very volatile commodity, especially this year. So that's a challenging piece of it." 

McCarthy opened its marine and industrial division headquarters in Channelview, Texas, in 2019. The company has undertaken projects such as container terminals, pier construction, wharfs, docks, bulkheads, and container yards for clients like Port Freeport and Port Houston.

The Velasco Container Terminal expansion will require 29,200 tons of steel piling, which will require a three-story construction template to ensure accurate alignment. In addition to the piling, 60,000 tons of revetment rock is to be placed in between the piles.

"The purpose of the template is to make sure that the pilings can be surveyed in and put in the exact location that they should be, while at the same time, provide access so that our pilot crews can get to them to actually drive them in," O'Donnell said. "It has to be very precise, there's a little bit of tolerance, just because of the nature of the work. But you know, when you have 1,000 of them to put in, it's worth spending time on the front end to get the right template."

Once the Velasco Terminal Expansion project is completed, the plan is to add at least two more cranes for post-Panamax vessels to Port Freeport, in addition to the two already there.

Once the expansion is complete, container capacity at the port will grow tremendously. In 2017, Port Freeport handled about 100,000 twenty-foot equivalent units. Once the Velasco Container Terminal expansion is complete, Port Freeport officials expect to see up to 2 million TEUs per year.

"We'll be able to put two ships at the dock," Booth said. "Potentially we could get another freight liner, another carrier, in here. That will mean more work, jobs, the people that work out of those ships, stevedores, longshoremen, they'll have to gear up, and we'll have more people driving the trucks doing the work that's done to load and unload the ships." 

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