Long Beach and OOCL agree a US$4.6bn lease

OOCL will take over the entire 300-acre-plus Middle Harbour site which is expected to be one of the greenest and most advanced cargo terminals in the US and will double present capacity to more that 3m teu.

Long Beach is investing US$1.2bn of the project’s costs with US$500m coming from OOCL. The nine-year project which is already underway will modernise two existing but relatively old terminals into a modern, state-of-the-art container terminal, add on-dock rail to eliminate truck trips and allow ships to plug into the electrical grid, eliminating the need for them to idle their diesel engines.

Observers said the announcement could not have come at a better time for the port following the decision by Hyundai Merchant Marine to close its California United Terminals (CUT) Pier E operation which was located in one of the areas affected, and transfer this to Los Angeles, – the main reason why Long Beach lost and Los Angeles gained market share in 2011.