Höegh Asia made the maiden call at the Horizon Terminal, the newly built Vehicle Facility at the Port Freeport, Texas, USA, on June 29.
The terminal is operated by Horizon Terminal Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Norway’s Höegh Autoliners Logistics AS and has been developed between Horizon Terminals and Port Freeport.
Per Folkesson, President of Höegh Autoliners Inc and Director of Horizon Terminals, said: ”We have been calling in the U.S. Gulf now for a number of years, mainly carrying project and heavy cargoes in to the area. Given the supply chain challenges facing the North American market we saw an opportunity to build a first-of-a-kind multi-user vehicle facility which will greatly increase efficiency to the Automotive Industry for exports and particularly for inbound flows.”
The terminal will have two processing centers, a VPC handling the Automotive market, and an EPC handling the Heavy Equipment market.
”The current development of phase 1 and 2 has an annual throughput capacity of about 135.000 vehicles while the expansion depending on future demand can be built out for another 500.000 vehicles annual throughput,” Folkesson said.
”Thus the capacity potential is significant. Beyond these two factors, we operate 24/7 in a non-TWIC environment, we have put in place a sheltered delivery infrastructure which gives the market a kind of VIP treatment delivering products to the terminal and we are currently working with the port planning a new and improved rail infrastructure on the terminal.”
Horizon Terminals have entered in to agreements with Amports of Jacksonville for management of the VPC and Red Hook Terminals of New York for management of the EPC and Terminal Operations.