As a ship carrying four immense, new con-tainer
cranes to the Port of Wilmington makes
its way across the Atlantic Ocean, the infrastruc-ture
upgrades they require are nearly complete.
“These infrastructure improvements, which
took more than a year to complete, accommo-date
four 100-foot gauge cranes that are capa-ble
of handling the largest ships that can navi-gate
the Cape Fear River’s 42-foot channel,” said
Thomas J. Eagar, CEO of the North Carolina
State Ports Authority.
“The cranes are the key components of Wilm-ington’s
five-year, $143 million container termi-nal
expansion,” Mr. Eagar said. “With the 42-
foot shipping channel, berth improvements, new
reach stackers and new cranes, the Port of Wilm-ington’s
expansion program over the next three
years will nearly triple our capacity based on
current volumes.”
STEM TO STERN
The Monthly Newsletter of the
North Carolina State Ports Authority
Board Update
Page 2
State of the Ports:
Expansions Continue
Pages 4 - 5
Morehead City
Welcomes Marines
Page 7
Where in the World
Are the Cranes?
Page 8
JANUARY
2007
Port development moves ahead
Additional improvements in terminal opera-tions
and more open paved storage areas will
boost the capacity of Wilmington’s container ter-minal
to 400,000 20-foot equivalent units annu-ally.
Upgrades to the Port’s two container-ship
berths, 8 and 9, included the addition of 100-
foot gauge crane rail at Berth 9, finished in De-cember
by T.A. Loving of Goldsboro, N.C., at a
cost of $4.3 million. Another $3.9 million of im-provements
to the existing waterside rail and the
fendering system by Precon Construction of Ches-apeake,
Va., are nearing completion.
The power-distribution system for the cranes,
which unlike the current diesel cranes run on
commercial power, cost $3.2 million and is ex-pected
to be finished by King Electric of Fay-etteville,
N.C., at the end of January.
The Zhen Hua 16 leaves Shanghai, China, Dec. 2 with the Port of Wilmington’s four new
container cranes. See page 2 for information about the voyage.
Continued on page 6
Here come the
cranes!
JANUARY 2007 PAGE 2
www.ncports.com
STEM TO STERN
STEM TO STERN
The Monthly Newsletter
of the North Carolina State Ports Authority
JANUARY 2007
Stem to Stern is an electronic
newsletter published by the North
Carolina State Ports Authority. It is
available on the Ports Authority website
in Portable Document Format for online
reading or printing by the reader:
www.ncports.com
Editorial content is edited, prepared,
and provided by the Communications and
Human Resources teams of the Ports
Authority.
Tom Eagar ...................... Chief Executive Officer
Karen Fox .... Senior Communications Director
Rick Koch .......... Vice President, Administration
Susan Clizbe ..............Communications Manager
Susan Pridgen .......................... Communications
Adrienne Wright ................... Human Resources
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Carl J. Stewart Jr., Chair ............Gastonia
J. Brynn Thomas, Vice Chair ....New Bern
Jesse S. Capel ....................................Troy
John Curry ............................... Charlotte
Jim Fain ........................................Raleigh
Jeff D. Etheridge Jr. .................Whiteville
Derryl Garner ..........................Newport
Alex MacFadyen Jr. .....................Raleigh
Greg Plemmons ................. Greensboro
Robert Wicker ................... Greensboro
Laura Wilson .......................Wilmington
N.C. State Ports Authority
P.O. Box 9002
Wilmington, NC 28402
(910) 343-6482
NCports_PR@ncports.com
www.ncports.com
BOARD REPORT
Board members visit new port site
N.C. State Ports Authority Board of Directors members (from left) Mayor
Derryl Garner of Newport, Laura Wilson of Wilmington, Brynn Thomas of
New Bern and Jeff Etheridge of Whiteville tour the site of the proposed
North Carolina International Port. The port is planned for a 600-acre site,
zoned heavy industrial, purchased by the Authority in early 2006. Initial
plans call for a container terminal with four berths, which will catapult
North Carolina to the forefront of East Coast container ports, and the
accompanying economic and industrial development. In the first year,
the Authority has taken significant steps toward developing the port.
CH2M Hill, a firm with extensive experience in similar projects, has been
retained to manage the development process.
Photo by Stephanie Ayers
Photo by Susan Clizbe
Chairman, CEO meet with local ILA leaders
North Carolina State Ports Authority Board Chairman Carl J. Stewart Jr., second from right, and Ports CEO Tom
Eagar, third from left, meet with leaders of the International Longshoreman’s Association. From left, Wilbert
Rowell of the South Atlantic and Gulf District, John Bellamy with Wilmington Local 1426, Michael Clemmons
with Local 1838 in Southport, and Charles Seaton, Wilmington Local 1766.
JANUARY 2007 PAGE 3
www.ncports.com
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PORTS PEOPLE
Key members of leadership team promoted
Two members of the North Carolina State Ports
Authority senior management team have been pro-moted.
Rita Harris is now Director of Government Re-lations
and Karen Fox, Senior Director of Communi-cations.
“Their significant knowledge and experience serve
us well at this historic point of development at North
Carolina’s Ports,” said Ports Authority CEO Thomas
J. Eagar in announcing the promotions. “Our $287
million port-expansion program at the Ports of More-head
City and Wilmington is in high gear. And we are
moving forward to create tremendous opportunities
for economic development by developing the new
North Carolina International Port in Brunswick County
and a new port terminal on Radio Island in Carteret
County. Rita and Karen continue to play crucial roles
in garnering support for these critical strategic initia-tives.”
Ms. Harris joined the Ports Authority in Septem-ber
2005 as government relations manager. She serves
as an advocate for the Authority’s initiatives in Wash-
Rita Harris
Karen Fox
N.C. General Assembly staff members tour the Port of Morehead
City and Radio Island with Ports Board of Directors Government
Relations chair Laura Wilson, front left, and Port of Morehead City
Operations Director Rex Edwards, far right. From left in the middle
row are Lesley Cates, Speaker’s office, and Kristine Leggett, Joy
Hicks and Kristin Walker from fiscal research. In the rear are
Layton Bedsole, Ports environmental director, Jim Klingler from
fiscal research, and Mark Blake, Ports director of engineering.
Photo by Rita Harris
ington, D.C., and with the General
Assembly and state agencies in Ra-leigh.
“Rita works tirelessly in Raleigh
and Washington, DC to garner sup-port
for North Carolina’s Ports,” Mr.
Eagar said, “and has successfully
helped secure State and Federal fund-ing
to support Ports’ expansion
projects.”
Before joining the Ports, Ms. Har-ris
was a special assistant for the bud-get
in the office of Speaker of the North
Carolina House of Representatives
James B. Black. She also served as
staff assistant to the House Appropri-ations
Committee and as legislative
assistant to Rep. Thomas C. Hard-away.
In Washington, D.C., she worked
on Capitol Hill as administrative as-sistant
and chief clerk to U.S. Rep.
Claude Pepper, House Rules Com-mittee
chairman, as financial manager for the House
Committee on Aging, and as staff assistant to Sen.
Floyd Haskell. She also was an executive assistant at
Patton Boggs, one of the nation’s leading public-pol-icy
law firms.
Mrs. Fox joined the Ports Authority in 1989, most
recently serving as director of communications. She
oversees media relations, marketing materials and
community and public relations functions for the Ports
Authority.
Under her leadership, the Authority developed one
of the first websites in the port industry as well as
strategic communications initiatives promoting the
statewide economic benefits supported by the Ports’
cargo handling activities.
“Karen will continue her close collaboration with
the Authority’s Board of Directors and senior man-agement
team to develop and execute public outreach
strategies as the Authority moves forward with growth
and expansion projects,” Mr. Eagar said.
Before she joined the Ports Authority, Mrs. Fox
worked at WECT-TV in Wilmington as promotions and
programming director, reporter, news anchor, asso-ciate
news director and community relations director.
She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The Ports’ vital economic
engines are in full throttle to
build economic prosperity for
citizens across the State – ad-ditional
jobs, income and tax
revenues. In the current 2007
budget, our State’s leaders –
Governor Mike Easley and the
General Assembly, thanks to
the leadership of our local del-egation
– recognized the impor-tance
of the State’s Ports in the
budget last year, investing a
$7.5 million appropriation and
$3 million in repair and renovation funding.
Key Projects Progress
The Port of Wilmington marks an important
milestone in February. Four new 100-foot gauge
container cranes, loaded onto a ship at the ZPMC
facility in Shanghai, China, will be delivered in
mid-February. These cranes are the linchpins of
the $143 million container-terminal expansion,
which includes significant upgrades to the dock
infrastructure to support the cranes, which are
electric rather than the traditional diesel power.
A new terminal operating system is also being
implemented.
At the Port of Morehead City, construction
began in October on a new 178,000-
square-foot general cargo ware-house,
expected to be ready for busi-ness
in August 2007. A rail-improve-ment
project is also complete. New
rail has been installed, and road
crossings were upgraded. The Port’s
main access road, outside storage
and truck parking areas are being
repaved, to nearly double the
amount of outside storage capacity
adjacent to the entry road.
We have updated our economic
impact calculations this year. Busi-ness
coming through your Ports now
supports about 85,000 jobs and $299
www.ncports.com
STEM TO STERN
State of the Ports 2006: Expansion Plans
FROM THE CEO’S DESK
by Thomas J. Eagar
Chief Executive Officer
After achieving record revenues in fiscal 2006,
the North Carolina State Ports Authority is mov-ing
forward aggressively to meet steadily increas-ing
market demand. Major expansion projects at
the State’s Ports at Wilmington and Morehead
City will meet short-term demand, while contin-ued
growth in international trade projected for
the next 15 years is being addressed. Plans to
develop a new terminal at Radio Island in More-head
City and the North Carolina International
Port in Brunswick County will meet the long-term
demand.
Continued market growth during fiscal 2006
drove container moves up 24 percent, and gen-eral
cargo volumes up 13 percent at the Port of
Wilmington, and breakbulk cargo at the Port of
Morehead City rose 19 percent. With container
tonnage included, the Authority's total volume
for fiscal 2006 was 5.8 million tons.
For fiscal 2007, we project a five-year com-pounded
annual growth rate of 18 percent in
container volume and 16 percent in general car-go
numbers, although cyclical fluctuations in
certain key commodities such as forest products
and rubber have required adjustments to our
market forecast.
Conceptual drawing of new warehouse at Port of Morehead City
Tom Eagar
JANUARY 2007 PAGE 4
Continued on page 5
JANUARY 2007 PAGE 5
www.ncports.com
STEM TO STERN
million a year in state and local tax revenues.
Here in the Southeast region alone, Ports activi-ties
support more than 21,000 jobs and nearly
$100 million a year in tax revenues.
Window of Opportunity
North Carolina’s Ports have a tremendous
window of opportunity to expand operations, in-crease
business and profitability and create sig-nificant
economic benefits to the State of North
Carolina.
With international trade projected to double
by 2020, container traffic expected to grow even
faster, and other East Coast ports running out
of room, the Ports Authority took advantage of a
golden opportunity. In April, we purchased 600
acres of industrial property on the west bank of
the Cape Fear River, just four miles from the
ocean, and intend to build a major international
container port to capture that new business.
The North Carolina International Port will cat-apult
North Carolina into the ranks of major East
Coast ports, giving our state the advantages al-ready
made possible by major ports in neighbor-ing
states: Virginia, South Carolina and Geor-gia.
We are in the preliminary stages of planning
the project, and have hired CH2M Hill, an inter-national
engineering firm, to plan, de-sign
and construct the new port.
We expect this new port to serve the
new, much-larger container ships be-ing
built now to handle the tremendous
growth in container traffic. In Decem-ber,
the largest container ship ever to
visit Wilmington arrived at our docks,
moving into the regular rotation. The
Ital Laguna holds 5,000 TEUs – 20-
foot equivalent units. That’s big – but
new ships being launched can carry
12,000 TEUs. The International Port will
allow us to keep up with both the
growth in demand and the growth in
ship sizes.
Most importantly, the International
Port will enable our State to compete
FROM THE CEO’S DESK
more effectively for industrial development, like
BMW and Daimler Chrysler in South Carolina
and Airbus and Hyundai in Alabama. It will also
attract distribution centers similar to those be-ing
built for Ikea, Target and other major retail-ers
at the Port of Savannah. All of those projects
– bringing with them thousands of jobs – require
a world-class port, and we plan to build that
port for North Carolina.
As other ports convert from bulk and break-bulk
cargoes – steel, rubber, lumber, grain and
similar products – to containers, these cargoes
are looking for a home. Already profiting from
this new business, the Ports Authority is looking
across the Newport River from the Port of More-head
City to Radio Island to accommodate even
more. We are well on the way to building a new
port terminal, with a site layout, traffic analysis,
and environmental surveys in place.
The Port of Wilmington’s profile may shift a
little when the International Port opens, but it
will stay busy – definitely with general cargo, and
very likely with continuing service from smaller
container ships.
The time is right for North Carolina’s Ports to
move to the forefront of East Coast ports. And
we are ready, with the support of our communi-ties
and our leaders, to make that move.
Continue as Business Volumes Increase
Continued from page 4
The site of the proposed North Carolina International Port
JANUARY 2007 PAGE 6
www.ncports.com
STEM TO STERN
Wilmington welcomes Ital Laguna on maiden voyage
The 965-foot, 5,090-TEU capacity Ital Laguna clears the turning basin and heads for her berth at the Port of Wilmington
Dec. 12. The visit, the second stop on the ship’s maiden voyage, marked the largest container ship to call at the Port.
The four new container cranes are on their way
from the ZPMC manufacturing facility in Shanghai,
China, and are expected to be delivered in mid-Feb-ruary.
Linchpins of the Wilmington container termi-nal
expansion, they can load 18 containers across a
ship, compared to a maximum of 13 for the four ex-isting
container cranes. Of the crane’s $33.4 million
purchase price, $16.5 million was funded by appro-priations
from the N.C. General Assembly.
In addition to the new cranes, nine SMV reach
stackers, with a price of $3.8 million, joined the Port
of Wilmington’s fleet in 2005. The container-handling
machines can stack containers five high, allowing
maximum storage in a minimum footprint.
Once the ship carrying the new cranes arrives at
Berth 9, it will take more than a week to move them
onto the dock. Installation, activation and testing of
the cranes will take several weeks, putting them into
service by the first of April.
While the Port of Wilmington container terminal
expansion will accommodate near-term growth, the
Ports Authority is also working to address the expo-
Continued from page 1
Photo by Susan Clizbe
Wilmington container terminal expansion moves forward
nential increase in market demand forecast over the
next 10 to 15 years, with plans for a new port termi-nal
on the west bank of the Cape Fear River in Brun-swick
County.
The proposed N.C. International Port is planned
for a 600-acre site approximately four miles from the
Atlantic Ocean. Initial plans envision a container ter-minal,
with several times the capacity of Wilmington’s
facility, and an industrial park on site for distribu-tion
centers or related operations.
The Ports Authority selected CH2M Hill, a global
engineering design firm with offices in Raleigh, N.C.,
to manage the development process. Current work
includes ongoing community outreach and the de-velopment
of a business plan and financial strategy
to take the project to construction.
“By seizing the opportunity this property offers,
we at the North Carolina State Ports Authority are
confident our Ports will play a major role in supply-ing
the shipping industry with much needed contain-er
capacity for generations to come,” Mr. Eagar said.
“And by meeting that need, we will also fulfill our main
mission of economic development in North Carolina.”
NEWS FROM THE PORTS
JANUARY 2007 PAGE 7
www.ncports.com
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Morehead City welcomes the USMC ...
Equipment for the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune rolls out of the belly of the USS Nashville at the
Port of Morehead City in December. The unit returned from a 6-month tour which included combat in Iraq and
Afghanistan and helping evacuate 15,000 Americans from Lebanon during tension there.
... and loads out lots of export fertilizer
Photos by Susan Clizbe
The Port of Morehead City’s bulk-handling shiploader fills the holds of the 623-foot Furness London - on her
maiden voyage - with 29,000 tons of export diammonium phosphate for New Zealand. The cargo was part of a
big year to date for the Port’s key customer, PCS Phosphate - 622,783 tons of phosphate were handled during the
first five months of fiscal year 2007, through November. That’s a 40-percent increase over fiscal 2006.
NEWS FROM THE PORTS
JANUARY 2007 PAGE 8
www.ncports.com
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NEWS FROM THE PORTS
Materials Management completes relocation
The Ports Authority’s Materials Management
Department has completed the consolidation of
its Wilmington operations into the new Materials
Materials Management Building. Formerly know
as the Cape Fear Music Building, it is located at
2508 Burnett Boulevard, between the Maritime
Building and the Port of Wilmington’s south gate.
In November, the Wilmington inventory and
supply section, formerly housed in M-4 on the
Port, joined the purchasing staff in the new lo-cation.
“One feature of the relocation we think will
be most useful is running a daily route through
the Port of Wilmington to deliver materials” said
John Robinson, materials manager. “We will try
both afternoon and morning schedules to deter-mine
which works best for the Port.”
The Materials Management Department pro-cesses
more than 11,000 inventory requests,
4,000 purchase orders and 50 bids annually. The
consolidation will offer the department to enhance
continuous improvement initiatives targeting pro-cess
and efficiency improvements.
“We look forward to the opportunities this con-solidation
offers to improve our service, and
thank you for your patience and cooperation dur-ing
all the renovation, moving and consolidation,”
Mr. Robinson said. “Our goal is to provide in-creased
support to all Ports Authority depart-ments,
at all locations.”
Track the Port of Wilmington’s new cranes
on the Ports Authority website at
www.ncports.com
Click on Where in the world are the Port of
Wilmington’s new container cranes?