This commentary appeared in the print edition of the Jan. 6, 2020, Journal of Commerce Annual Review and Outlook.
2020 will be an exciting year for the South Carolina Ports Authority as we finalize a $1.6 billion capital plan which will enable us to handle four 14,000-TEU vessels simultaneously in our port with very high berth productivity. We will finalize the densification of the Wando Welch Terminal, which will give us 2.4 million TEU of capacity at that terminal. We will have a soft opening of the new Hugh Leatherman Container Terminal in advance of the opening of Phase 1 in April 2021. This is the first new greenfield container terminal built in the US since 2009 and will add an additional 700,000 TEU of capacity at its opening. And our harbor deepening project will be well on its way to completion, whereby we will achieve the deepest harbor on the US East Coast at 52 feet of depth, enabling us to handle ships at 48 feet of draft without tidal restriction.
Our inland ports in Greer and Dillon will handle 200,000 rail lifts and enable the seamless movement of cargo by overnight rail within the state of South Carolina. Traditionally having been a manufacturing-centric port, we will continue our push into retail and e-commerce distribution to help address the shortage of distribution centers which exists in the US Southeast. We will continue our work to improve the quality of chassis operations in our port, which are vital to trucker efficiency and the movement of freight.
We continue to believe that the Southeast is the best place to be in the port business in the US and that the East and Gulf Coast ports will, in the not too distant future, handle 50 percent of the Asia trade with the US. This will be more so the case as production moves further south in Asia.