Port Saint John is about to get a whole lot busier over the coming weeks and months.
Two more container cranes arrived at the port Friday night, bringing the total to six.
Crews will spend the next several days preparing to move the cranes from the vessel onto the port.
Craig Bell Estabrooks, president and CEO of Port Saint John, said it is an exciting time for the city.
“The people of Saint John have a long memory of what a thriving port city gave them and their family. I think they also realize that for decades, they know what it looks like to not have a thriving port,” Bell Estabrooks told reporters Friday afternoon.
These are not new cranes — in fact, they had been in operation at the Port of Virginia for more than a decade.
But the used cranes have saved DP World Canada, which operates Saint John’s container terminal, a lot of time and money.
President Doug Smith said they paid just a few thousand dollars for the cranes, although the total cost to refurbish them, ship them to Saint John and get them ready for use is in the $12 million range.
That is typically the cost of one brand new crane built and delivered — although Smith said the wait time for a new crane is about 2.5 years.
He said the two additional cranes will mean even more growth and additional jobs for the already busy port.
“We have commitment for new volume starting in March and bigger ships, and a big part of that is having these cranes so we can handle it, that we can get on deck the height — it’s called nine high on deck — and we have the outreach,” said Smith.
With an outreach of 65 metres, the cranes can reach up to 24 containers wide and are capable of servicing vessels with a capacity greater than 10,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units). The lift height of the cranes is also 5.4 metres greater, reaching 40.4 metres.
Port Saint John recently completed a $205-million west side modernization project, which saw its laydown capacity more than double to 325,000 TEUs.
Work continues on phase two of the project, valued at $42 million, which will increase the port’s laydown capacity to 800,000 TEUs by 2025.
As a result of the modernization project, which includes a deeper and wider channel, DP World added two larger cranes in 2023 to accommodate bigger vessels.
Smith said their goal is to add even more container cranes in the future — but first, they want to see the growth from the cranes they have currently.
Officials hope to have the two newest container cranes up and running by the end of January.
