The Alabama Port Authority and APM Terminals Mobile have announced an agreement to proceed with the construction of a new 400 meter container berth at the Port of Mobile. The announcement was made after the completion of Port of Mobile’s channel dredging project.
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The new container berth at its facility at the seaport will be an extension to the existing berth adding enough room to handle another ULCV alongside. The new dredged channel will enable the port of Mobile to handle the largest container vessels that call in the United States – enhancing Mobile’s competitiveness.
The dredging project formally wrapped up in September, thanks to US$366 million in funding from the federal government and from the State of Alabama’s new gasoline tax fund. The project took the channel to a control depth of 50 feet, making it the deepest on the US Gulf coast, and added a passing lane. The objective was to make Mobile directly competitive with West and East Coast ports that can handle fully-laden post-Panamax container vessels on their “first call,” when they are drawing up to 50 feet of water. APMT’s terminal project, including a long list of additional improvements, will enable those port calls at scale.
The US$131 million berth extension project will allow berthing of a total of three large container ships at the terminal at the same time. Construction is scheduled to begin next year and be completed in 2028.
Together with other ongoing improvements, the berth will bring AMPT Mobile’s annual capacity to around 1.4 million TEUs. To accommodate the increase APM is also working on a 33-acre container yard expansion, a rail capacity upgrade, and construction of a rail bridge that will set the terminal up for on-dock rail access. All the work is underpinned by a 20-year lease extension that takes APM’s tenure at Mobile out to 2058.