Prime Consultant Selected for $600 Million International Port in the Works in North Carolina

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Recognizing an opportunity to vault itself into the ranks of one of the East Coast’s busiest ports, in 2005, the North Carolina State Ports Authority (Wilmington, North Carolina) began developing plans for a $600 million international port dubbed the North Carolina International Port (NCIP) to be located on the Cape Fear River in Brunswick County. As part of the development process, the Ports Authority recently selected CH2M Hill, headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, to act as the prime consultant on the proposed project.

CH2M Hill, a global leader in full-service engineering, construction and operations, acting as the prime consultant, will direct a team of companies that will handle the project management, planning and design of the port and intermodal facilities, environmental issues as well as public outreach on the venture.

The port will be spread across a 600-acre site and will consist of a 4,000-foot berth, 200-acre container yard, warehouse space plus a world-class distribution center. The new port, upon completion of the initial phases, will have a minimum annual capacity of 1.5 million TEUs (20’ equivalent container units, a standard in the port industry) and is anticipated to eventually ramp up capacity to over 2 million TEUs annually.

Current schedules call for the environmental impact statement (EIS) to be completed in early 2009. Once funding is approved, final design and engineering will continue into the summer of 2010, and a general contractor will be selected that fall to head the actual construction efforts. Actual construction is expected to begin in early 2011, with the initial phases of the port becoming operational in 2015.

The North Carolina State Ports Authority currently operates major ports in Morehead City and Wilmington as well as a network of inland terminals in Charlotte and within the Piedmont Triad at Greensboro. With its prime central eastern seaboard location, the Ports Authority is poised to make the jump to the big leagues and compete with its neighboring port authorities in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia. The proposed new international port may just be the vehicle that launches the North Carolina State Ports Authority into the ranks of the elite ports on the East Coast.

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