PORT OF WILMINGTON INDEPENDENT COMMERCIAL REVIEW

The brief. In September 2018, Gulftainer's subsidiary GT USA signed a fifty-year concession with the State of Delaware to operate and develop the Port of Wilmington, committing up to US$600 million of investment, including a new 1.2 million TEU container facility at the former DuPont Edgemoor site. Black Quay delivered the independent technical and commercial performance analysis behind it, and continued to provide independent trade and development monitoring.

The challenge. Concession performance is a long-horizon question that usually gets asked as a short-horizon one. Assessing whether the port was performing required a view of the fleet it would serve across the concession's life, not the vessels calling today.

That put fleet forecasting at the centre of what is normally a purely commercial review and made the renewable energy trade, which barely existed at the port, a material part of the assessment.

What we did. We produced container and non-container fleet analysis, beginning with international and regional benchmarking and then developing anticipated fleet mixes across the concession life. Against that base we reviewed vessel call and exchange performance, ran cost reviews and tested volumetric throughput performance sensitivity.

On the commercial side we delivered competition review against other ports in the region, cost-benefit analysis, review of all proposed capital expenditure with calculation of likely operating costs under each option, and funding strategy for the proposed new terminal at the site.

The outcome. The review gave an independent, evidence-based view of concession performance grounded in forecast fleet and tested capital options rather than current activity.

The port is positioned to become one of the leading container and renewable energy facilities on the US east coast.

 

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