The backbone of South Louisiana’s maritime trade sector has always been and will always be the Mississippi River.
The main artery within an expansive inland system of connecting waterways capable of reaching more than 30 U.S. states, the Mississippi River offers importers and exporters across a wide spectrum of different industries strategic, built-in logistical benefits that can’t be replicated anywhere else in the world.
And yet, in this fast-paced, bottom-line era where efficiency (from both a time and money perspective) trumps all else when moving cargo, several prominent local civic and business leaders have pointed out the economic opportunities and advancements in maritime transit lost to neighboring regions (namely Mobile and Houston) because of a reluctance to finalize plans for the Louisiana International Terminal (LIT) – a state-of-the-art facility that, somewhat ironically, has been bantered about since the 1990s.
Finally, the wait appears to be over.
“For decades, it has been known that a new container terminal is needed downriver from the Crescent City Connection Bridge in order to serve larger vessels coming into the market and to keep Louisiana competitive in the Gulf,” said Port of New Orleans Press Secretary Kimberly Curth.
“The Louisiana International Terminal will serve vessels of all sizes, dramatically increasing Louisiana’s import and export capacity while also fostering strategic inland growth,” Curth said. “With our unmatched inland connections and no bridge restrictions, LIT will meet market demands for much-needed supply chain solutions and bring prosperity to our region for generations to come.
Curth said LIT combined with the Napoleon Avenue Container Terminal in New Orleans will create a true strategic port complex that can meet the needs of the market for decades to come.
Situated on 1,200 acres of land in Violet that hugs a naturally deep section of the Mississippi River and a fortified federal levee system offering protection from hurricanes and storm surges, the Louisiana International Terminal will stand as a modern maritime gateway capable of meeting the needs of today’s shippers and adapting to the demands of tomorrow’s shippers.
Ground is scheduled to be broken on the $1.8 billion facility in 2025 once environmental review process is finalized, with the initial phase of operation set to commence by 2028.
Once complete, LIT would be able to accommodate New Panamax and Post Panamax vessels – larger (and generally less cost-prohibitive) container ships that the current Port of New Orleans site can’t handle because of height/air-draft restrictions from the Crescent City Connection Bridge – a troubling inefficiency that occasionally causes companies to look out of state for alternative transit solutions.
“People like to spin things in a positive way, but the reality is we are playing ‘Catch-Up’ to some degree with the repeated delays involving a downriver terminal,” said Kristiann App, Vice President of Business Development a J.W. Allen & Co., a global logistics provider.
“Currently, as we stand, with the investments that have been made to attract other services to the Port of Mobile, shippers in Louisiana — including some of my customers — have actually chosen to truck freight from South Louisiana over to Mobile because they have better shipping options by bypassing the Port of New Orleans,” App continued. “So, what we’re trying to do with the downriver terminal is to provide a more-attractive option that keeps Louisiana cargo leaving Louisiana ports.”
Forecasts suggest a modern container facility fully outfitted to move cargo that meets the demands of the current global economy, like LIT, will have a multi-layered economic impact throughout Louisiana.
According to the Baton Rouge financial firm Lewis, Terrell and Associates, the Louisiana International Terminal within 25 years will create more than 18,000 new direct and indirect jobs in the state, leading to $1 billion in new tax revenue. Conversely, predictors indicate that without a facility capable of handling larger container vessels, Louisiana’s maritime transit sector will lose nearly 10,000 existing jobs by 2050 and lose $205 million in existing state taxes and $10 billion in industry sales.
“The thing that’s important about LIT is that you’re not just going to see an impact on the New Orleans metro area. You’re going to see impacts across the state,” said Harrison Crabtree, Director of the World Trade Center in New Orleans. “For instance, you’ll see warehousing development on the Northshore to accommodate the increase in goods coming through to the Port.”
Harrison said the rail connectivity of LIT will have positive impacts in central and north Louisiana. “So, it’s not just ‘HERE.’ It’s not just jobs in Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. You’re going to see them pop up in St. Tammany and Tangipahoa and so on,” he said.
“As we’ve seen in places like Mobile, when you have a true container hub like the LIT terminal it promotes and serves existing industry and support industries throughout the state, but also can create a ‘ripple effect’ scenario that facilitates new economic opportunities that simply didn’t exist before,” Harrison said.
The Violet location in St. Bernard Parish affords the Port of New Orleans room to expand, if needed. The site also comes equipped with pre-existing intermodal logistical solutions for companies looking to optimize logistical options or diversify transportation methods in case one or multiple links in the supply chain ever become compromised.
From the Violet site, cargo movers would have access to four critical interstate systems via the proposed St. Bernard Transportation Corridor, a new roadway that would relieve existing local traffic congestion, provide additional hurricane evacuation routes for residents, and provide trucks leaving LIT an alternate driving route.
LIT is also situated to provide connectivity to 6 Class I railroads – an increasingly-popular mode of commercial transit that’s experienced a bit of a renaissance because of its affordability and minimal environmental impact. According to data from the Association of American Railroads, average rail rates were 44 percent lower in 2021 than they were in 1981 – affordability that saves U.S. industries (and by proxy, consumers) billions of dollars each year and keeps American entities competitive in the global marketplace.
“What I like to preach is, ‘We’re not out of the game. We just need to get ourselves put back in play,’ The downriver terminal does that,” App said. “We exist within a global economy, and that’s not going to change any time soon. We need to position Louisiana to make sure that Louisiana is going to compete, going to grow, and is going to create jobs to keep our people here, not elsewhere.”
