At long last, Portland has a second crane to handle growing freight volume at the International Maine Terminal. The new mobile-harbor crane arrived from Germany on Tuesday and was lifted onto the pier on Wednesday morning.
“As burgeoning trade relationships with our North Atlantic neighbors drive higher volumes of freight through the IMT, we have to be prepared with sound infrastructure and sound equipment,” Jonathan Nass, deputy commissioner of the Maine Department of Transportation, said in a news release.
He added that while the current crane has reliably serviced Eimskip container ships since 2013, at 20-plus years old there’s a risk of its long-term dependability.
“The addition of the new crane will not only help with supporting operations at the IMT, it will give our partners confidence that we can reliably service growing demand,’ he said.
Nass told Mainebiz in May that the new crane will alter Portland’s skyline, and said more recently that he doesn’t expect the current trade wars to put a damper on bustling port activity.
“We’re doing very well at the port, and we think no one’s going to stop buying haddock from Iceland or Norway,” he said.
He has also said that MDOT is “ready to dig in” on building a waterfront cold-storage warehouse after Americold bowed out.
Some $3.2 million in state bond funds will be used to pay for the new equipment, which was built by Switzerland’s Liebherr Group in Rostock, Germany.
