WASHINGTON: As South Carolina Ports Authority officials announced this week plans to build a second inland port, they celebrated the success of their first one, in Greer. The inland port in Greer handled 8,821 rail moves in March, achieving consecutive months of record-breaking volume to mark a fiscal year-to-date increase of 66 percent with 67,032 lifts since July. Jim Newsome, president and CEO of the ports authority, said the inland port has proven to be a critical component of the intermodal container logistics landscape in the Southeast since opening in November of 2013.
“This is truly a momentous day for the SCPA and Inland Port Greer,” Newsome said. “Such volume annualized means we can achieve 100,000 rail lifts in calendar year 2016, a volume that we originally expected that would only be possible in five years’ time. This facility is firing on all cylinders with a rich mix of exports, imports and empty container movements for many of the major container shipping lines.”
Discussions between the SCPA and Norfolk Southern began in January 2012 for the development of Inland Port Greer, a facility designed to convert a significant volume of existing containerized truck traffic between Greer and Charleston to rail as well as create a significant distribution hub for the area.
The SCPA broke ground on the 40-acre site in March 2013. It’s developed to involve the convergence of four modes of transportation at one site, with the port, rail, truck and the nearby Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport each handling international commerce for the region’s shippers.
The inland port operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week to serve the supply-chain needs of the SCPA’s major customers. It’s located within 500 miles of 100 million consumers in the Eastern U.S. Dollar Tree, which is building a major “big box” distribution center in Cowpens, will soon become the inland port’s newest customer.