Port of New Orleans

The port recently spent $36 million on two new gantry cranes and a 4.5-acre marshalling yard that expanded its container-handling area to 115 acres. The site is anchored by the Napoleon Avenue Container Yard, completed in 2004. The port can now handle 640,000 20-foot equivalent units in container cargo per year.

Facility upgrades at The Port of New Orleans — particularly the arrival of two giant blue cranes earlier this year — have positioned the port to capture its share of the expected swell in container cargo after the 2015 opening of an expanded Panama Canal.

But port officials said there is still more that can be done — including pursuing private investment in the port’s container terminal — to help it take a bigger bite of the 5 million additional containers expected to come into the Gulf of Mexico by 2025.

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