The project is taking aim at West Coast
ports, whose unit train operations have
traditionally served Chicago and the Ohio
Valley. West Coast ports, plagued by labor
productivity issues and capacity constraints, remain vulnerable to diversion
of shipments, enabled by the opening of
the expanded Panama Canal, which can
accommodate vessels capable of sailing to
the East Coast with capacities of 10,000
twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) and
higher, Lynch said.
By contrast, the 1,200-acre Garden
City facility has enough available capaci-
ty to scale up quickly to meet additional
demand, Lynch said.
While relatively time-sensitive shipments will continue to call at West Coast
ports, Savannah, which is expected to be
the first U.S. East Coast port of call for
much of the freight moving through the
canal, will be an attractive alternative for
cargo owners receiving shipments from
Asia, Lynch said.
The larger ships sailing through the
canal will offer businesses lower costs per
container slot, according to GPA. This, in
turn, will shift Savannah’s market westward by lowering the overall cost to reach
inland points, the ports authority said.
“The canal makes the [Arc] project viable,” Lynch said.
Savannah hopes to bank on its geographic position as the farthest west of
the so-called East Coast ports. It will also
attempt to leverage Garden City’s reputation as one of the best intermodal facilities
operated by any U.S. port. Containers
generally move from vessel to railcar
within 24 hours, enabling overnight service to Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North
Carolina, and South Carolina.
GPA is investing $80 million in the
project, while $44 million more will come
from a grant made under the Department
of Transportation’s “FastLane” program,
under which DOT awarded $800 million
in grants to 18 infrastructure projects
nationwide.
General Electric Co. is turning its
attention to the supply chain software sector, snapping up rail software specialist ShipXpress Inc. in an
effort to incorporate digital technology into its traditional industrial
operations.
GE said Aug. 30 that it had
acquired Neptune Beach, Fla.-based
ShipXpress, with plans to fold the
business into its Chicago-based GE
Transportation unit and combine
ShipXpress’s cloud-based collaboration and rail-shipment reporting
software with GE’s Predix data
analytics platform for monitoring
industrial assets. Terms of the transaction had not been disclosed at
press time.
That combination will give users
in the industrial rail shipping indus-
try an information advantage by
delivering assistance with rail oper-
ations, car accounting, and inter-
line settlement, GE Transportation
spokesperson Mailee Garcia said in
an e-mail.
Over the long term, GE plans to
leverage the acquisition to grow
beyond its current range of logistics
services. “The combined business
helps us provide new outcomes to
modes beyond rail. We expect to
have offerings in truck and intermodal, too,” Garcia said.
The latest move reinforces
Boston-based GE’s bet on becoming
an information management company after 124 years spent deeply
rooted in industrial manufacturing.
It could allow GE to create new revenue streams by helping
GE amps up focus on supply chain software market
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