New leadership will guide a restructured Port of Virginia facing fierce competition.

 

 

Each week, massive cargo ships stocked to capacity with U.S. exports set sail from the Port of Virginia, heading to the Middle East and then Asia. These ships, each almost the width of a football field and slightly longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, draw up to 49.5 feet of water under their hulls, pushing up against the port's 50-foot channel depths.

 

Ships this size are calling on ports up and down the East Coast, but the Port of Virginia, with its deep and unobstructed sea lanes and channels, is the most capable of handling these vessels when fully laden.

 

Since 2012, Mediterranean Shipping Co.'s Golden Gate Service has called twice at the Port of Virginia in each East Coast journey with these ships, which have a capacity of more than 9,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units). Hampton Roads is its second stop on the East Coast, but more importantly, also its last, when the ships load up on U.S. goods before heading back through the Suez Canal to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and then on to Asia. Port officials hope this pattern is a sign of things to come - as more shipping lines use Virginia's deep harbors to handle their first-in or last-out calls on the U.S. East Coast, when their ships are at their fullest.

 

Fresh off their best-performing fiscal year in history, Virginia Port Authority (VPA) officials are bullish about the port's future. "I'm really optimistic about not only our competitive advantage but the opportunity to strengthen those advantages over the next five years," says Rodney Oliver, interim executive director of the VPA. "The 1990s were probably the Port of Virginia's decade, the 2000s were Savannah, [Ga.]. I think it's back to the Port of Virginia for the 2010s."

 

The Port of Virginia and the international maritime industry are at the helm of change. In the wake of its latest rejection of multibillion-dollar offers to privatize operations, the state-owned port is restructuring, trying to better align the port authority with its longtime operator, Virginia International Terminals (VIT). After a management shakeup and the adoption of a reorganized business model, the next generation of port leadership will navigate it into a new era of international shipping. The VPA board of commissioners could announce a new executive director of the port as soon as September.