Top 50 Global Container Ports

Special Report

Rising maintenance needs

Since the purchase of Maher, Macquarie has doubled down on US terminal assets, particularly on the US West Coast. In 2019, it bought the Long Beach Container Terminal from OOCL for $ 1.78 billion and a year later acquired Long Beach’ s ITS terminal for an undisclosed sum. In 2023, it purchased significant ownership stakes in TraPac’ s Los Angeles and Oakland terminals and in Yusen Terminals.

At 450 acres and almost 2 million container lifts per year, Maher is Macquarie’ s largest single terminal asset and the largest privately operated terminal on the US East Coast. Maher has served as the primary East Coast hub for carriers in the Ocean Alliance.

One of those carriers, CMA CGM, has moved more of its vessel calls to the two New York-New Jersey marine terminals it bought in 2022. However, CMA CGM’ s terminals do not have the capacity to also handle other Ocean Alliance carriers, including Cosco Shipping, OOCL and Evergreen Marine.

CMA CGM’ s New Jersey terminal will have more space once a throughput agreement with carriers in the Premier Alliance expires in 2027. Even then, Maher would need to handle some Ocean Alliance vessels, people familiar with the matter say.

In addition to Ocean Alliance, Maher handles independent services from Zim and other carriers. It also serves as swing capacity for Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Co. amid ongoing capital projects at the two terminals that serve those carriers.

Maher’ s talks with the PANYNJ come amid the bi-state agency’ s focus on shifting costs for maintaining the port’ s wharves and berths to terminal operators. While marine terminals have typically only been responsible for everything from the ground up, CMA CGM and APM Terminals, which signed a new lease in March, agreed to terms requiring them to cover costs of wharf and berth maintenance.

Damage from a marine borer, a type of worm, has rendered some of the pylons supporting the New York-New Jersey piers down to the diameter of a“ toothpick,” PANYNJ Port Director Bethann Rooney told reporters during a July press briefing. The additional maintenance responsibility on the part of tenants is lengthening Maher’ s lease talks due to the costs involved.

Repairing damaged wharves and other maintenance could add $ 20 million to a terminal operator’ s annual costs under a long-term lease. The alternative is spending up to $ 250 million to fully replace a damaged berth.

With each terminal having three or four big-ship berths, a terminal operator could face up to $ 1 billion in replacement costs. Moreover, any berth replacement would reduce capacity at the port, requiring terminals to coordinate such projects as they occur.

email: michael. angell @ spglobal. com

Long Beach ITS terminal upgrade to boost capacity by about 50 %

By Bill Mongelluzzo

A $ 365 million upgrade will increase annual capacity at ITS Long Beach( pictured) to 2.6 million TEUs. The Image Party / Shutterstock. com

The International Transportation Service( ITS) terminal in Long Beach began a $ 365 million upgrade on July 14 that will increase its container capacity by 50 % and enable it to work two 18,000-TEU ships simultaneously.

The work involves filling in a 19-acre slip at the terminal to make the property usable. Scheduled for completion in about three and a half years, the project will also improve truck access by upgrading the gate infrastructure and boost efficiency through the replacement of an outdated terminal operating system( TOS) with a new TOS, ITS CEO Kim Holtermand told the Journal of Commerce.“ Our tech is quite old,” he said.“ It’ s time to upgrade it.” ITS is, in effect, two terminals separated by the slip, and filling it in will increase the terminal’ s size to 277 acres and create a more efficient, square-shaped facility. With a total of 3,500 linear feet of berth, ITS will be able to handle two super-post-Panamax container ships, or one 18,000-TEU vessel and two smaller ships simultaneously.

“ It will be a large, efficient facility with big [ super post-Panamax ] cranes and improved infrastructure,” Holtermand said, adding that ITS’ annual throughput capacity will increase by about 50 % to 1.5 million container moves, or 2.6 million TEUs.

Gate improvements

Included in the project will be a reconfiguration of the terminal’ s gate complex and a new TOS that will streamline truck access and egress. Trucks calling at ITS in June had an average turn time of 71 minutes, compared with an average of 62 minutes the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, according to the Harbor Trucking Association.

22 Journal of Commerce | August 4, 2025 www. joc. com