The Made in Virginia television series, a show that explores the best and most unique products across the US state, has covered the topic of automation at the Port of Virginia with crane engineering and control systems specialist TMEIC.
TMEIC’s automation technology will soon be the driving power behind 86 rail-mounted Automated Stacking Cranes (ASCs) that are coming to two of Virginia’s primary container terminals as part of a $217 million contract between the port and crane specialist Konecranes.
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The contract, announced on November 15, 2016, is the largest one-time order for ASCs in industry history.
Konecranes will build and deliver the cranes for the project, which begins in 2018 and will continue in phases until 2020, with 60 cranes installed in Norfolk International Terminals (NIT) and 26 in Virginia International Gateway (VIG).
Understand more about container crane and yard stacking crane projects by reading the technical paper ‘Something New For The Crane Retrofit Market’ by James Gabbard, Sales Manager Automated Crane Systems, TMEIC
By 2020, the port will have expanded the container handling capacity at VIG by 600,000 units and the capacity at NIT by 400,000 units.
The combined cost of the projects is $670 million.
In his announcement in November last year, Terry R. McAuliffe, Virginia’s Governor, said: “Once the construction is done and these cranes are in place and operational, our port will have the capacity to process an additional 1 million containers annually, have the channel depth to handle the biggest ships in the Atlantic trade and double-stack rail service offered by Norfolk Southern and CSX to some of the nation’s most important markets.”
Declan Daly, General Manager for Industrial Systems at TMEIC, who featured in the Made in Virginia episode, recently shared his insights into the port and terminal industry through an interview at Port Technology's Container Terminal Automation Conference:
