Portsmouth Marine Terminal to reopen Monday

Published September 12, 2014 by Jessica Sabbath

The Port of Virginia’s Portsmouth Marine Terminal (PMT) will reopen to cargo operations Monday after being closed for nearly three years.

The terminal, which will process between 75,000 and 100,000 containers annually, is expected to help relieve congestion at the Virginia International Gateway (formerly known as APM Terminals) in Portsmouth and Norfolk International Terminals. The marine terminals have become more congested as container moving through the port continues to reach record levels.

“Reconstituting a portion of PMT will provide some relief at Virginia International Gateway (VIG) and NIT, as both of those terminals are busy and pushing their capacity limits,” John Reinhart, Virginia Port Authority executive director and CEO, said in a statement. “PMT is a deep-water facility that will serve an important role for our purposes, but over the long-term as a facility that handles many different types of cargo: bulk, breakbulk and ro-ro [roll on, roll off].”

On Monday, the terminal will be open for trucks carrying containers for export. The first vessel call is scheduled for October.

PMT was closed in late 2010 after the Virginia Port Authority negotiated a 20-year lease of the APM Terminals’ modern facility in Portsmouth.

In spring 2014, the port reached a short-term agreement with Pasha Automotive Services, which staged more than 6,000 Chrysler-Jeep vehicles for export to the Asia-Pacific market.

A 45-acre site on PMT currently is being used to hold construction materials for Skanska as it builds the Downtown Tunnel. The port also has a 44-acre empty container depot at PMT. Thirty acres of the site are dedicated to terminal operations.

Rail service from CSX and Norfolk Southern is offered by the Norfolk & Portsmouth Belt Line.