SC Ports welcomes first ship to Leatherman Terminal

South Carolina Ports welcomed the first ship to its recently opened Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal on April 9, according to port officials, who said the event marks the first container terminal to open in the United States since 2009. The terminal welcomed Hapag Lloyd’s Yorktown Express.

The Leatherman Terminal was 20 years in the making and sits along the Cooper River in North Charleston, S.C., near Charleston Harbor. It can accommodate the largest ships calling on East Coast ports, with phase one of the project adding 700,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of throughput capacity to the Port of Charleston, officials also said.

“We have invested in the right infrastructure at the right time to handle growing cargo volumes and bigger ships, ensuring SC Ports remains a top 10 U.S. container port,” SC Ports CEO Jim Newsome said in a statement. “The Leatherman Terminal adds a berth and more capacity to the Port of Charleston when it is most needed on the East Coast.”