The largest cranes to operate in a US commercial port, standing 170 feet tall, arrived Monday at Port of Virginia, as part of the port’s efforts to align with the overall trend of bigger and bigger ships arriving.
According to data provided by The Associated Press, the Chinese-made gantry cranes towered over the ship that carried them through the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
The new cranes should be up and running in about two months in Portsmouth, a city near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
This development is part of an ongoing expansion-and-dredging project at the Port. The Port of Virginia secured in October federal authorization to proceed with the Wider, Deeper, Safer project to deepen and widen the Norfolk Harbor’s commercial shipping channels. This project will make the Port of Virginia the deepest port on the US East Coast.
The project was approved under the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018. This legislation provides for improvements to the nation’s rivers and harbors; for the conservation and development of water and related resources; and for water pollution control activities and for other purposes.
The move came as shipping companies tend to using fewer but larger container ships to save on costs, which has triggered several ports worldwide to make room for the larger ships, said Robert McNab, an economics professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, to the Associated Press.
The port had approved spending $40 million for the cranes. Under the US-China trade war, a 25% tariff could have meant a $10 million cost increase, but the cranes were eventually removed from a list.
