Posted on June 23, 2021
Three massive new cranes arrived at South Boston’s Conley Terminal on Tuesday morning, an important moment in the Massachusetts Port Authority’s years-long drive to make the terminal accessible to bigger ships and a key new trade route.
The cranes came on a ship from China that had been at sea since mid-April. Two of them are 205 feet high — the tallest low-profile cranes in the world, according to Massport — while the third is a bit shorter, at 145 feet, to account for planes landing and taking off from nearby Logan International Airport.
The equipment can lift ship containers about 60% higher than Conley’s current cranes. That will allow the terminal to service larger ships and to handle more cargo from those ships that currently call on port. The cranes are expected to be fully operational this fall, on a new berth constructed to hold them.
“We’re unlocking a lot of capacity with these new cranes,” Massport Port Director Mike Meyran said in a recent interview. “The only thing holding us back from growth is the physical limitations we’ve got.”
Massport is remaking the Port of Boston in the hope of attracting ships coming directly from Southeast Asia, a market that was becoming increasingly important to Massachusetts businesses even before the pandemic. The supply-chain problems exposed by Covid-19 have made a direct connection to that part of the world even more important for local importers and exporters like The Kraft Group and Jordan’s Furniture.
“There’s high demand for customers in New England to be on that trade route. We’re starting to market that heavily, now that the cranes are in sight,” Meyran said.
The new cranes are only one part of a much larger $850 million revamp of the Port of Boston, including the dredging of Boston Harbor to allow for larger ships to access the terminal. That dredging process is expected to be complete by 2022.
Once everything’s done, Massport officials hope the port will better compete with the gargantuan Port of New York and New Jersey, which has historically captured a large chunk of Massachusetts export traffic.
