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Conveyor Equipment
Manufacturers Association
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safety information. No other organization has
been more instrumental in the development of
standards and safety practices in the conveyor
industry than CEMA.
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the norm at an inland port, the advantages quickly disappear,” he cautions. “A
correctly run inland port should reduce
cost [for shippers] while at the same time
improving the consistent flow of a supply
chain.”
MORE TO COME
Like their marine terminals, seaport-owned inland ports have seen steady
growth in container volumes in recent
years. The Virginia Inland Port at Front
Royal, for example, set a new monthly
record for container volume (including
empties) in October 2018, handling 3,958
boxes, up nearly 18 percent over the same
period in 2017. Front Royal may have
been a victim of its own success; it recently received a $15.5 million federal grant to
improve rail, road, and bridge infrastructure to ease traffic congestion.
Demand has been high enough, in fact,
that several port authorities have built
or will build additional inland terminals.
Virginia, for example, added an inland
port in Danville, near the West Virginia
border. A new Procter & Gamble manufacturing plant nearby will soon join a customer roster that includes Rubbermaid,
The Home Depot, and Family Dollar.
South Carolina Ports opened a second intermodal facility, Inland Port
Dillon, served by CSX, in April 2018. In
North Carolina, the state port authority
relaunched service via CSX from the Port
of Wilmington to its Charlotte Inland
Terminal. It also operates the Piedmont
Triad Inland Terminal in Greensboro.
And the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA),
which started in 2013 with an inland port
at Cordele in the southern part of the
state, opened the Appalachian Regional
Port near Chatsworth, nearly 400 miles
from the Port of Savannah, in August
2018. Among its biggest users are the
Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.;
car parts manufacturers; and carpet and
flooring producers in northwest Georgia
and eastern Tennessee. And there’s more:
In December 2018, GPA announced plans
for the Northeast Georgia Inland Port
near Gainesville, to open in 2021.
The number of inland ports will grow in
the near future, Kemmsies predicts. Not
only are they effective options for avoid-
ing congested seaport environs, but
they also can help to counter the
effects of the truck shortage. “We
need an alternative to tapped-out
truck capacity. With electronic log-
ging devices, it’s becoming a lot
harder to get truck capacity, and
the hours-of-service restrictions on
top of severely congested roadways
are affecting how far truckers can
go and come back on the same
day,” he says. Pair that with record-
high import container volumes and
increasingly big ships, and it looks
like the need for inland intermodal
ports will only grow.
