Oceania Cruise Lines will be offering the Regatta, while Celebrity Cruises will be offering the Solstice.  Early cruise bookings have commenced for both of these new ships departing from Seattle in 2013.
 
The Regatta is the flagship of the Oceania Cruises fleet.  Refurbished in 2011, she has an overall length of 594 feet and a capacity of 684 passengers.  She will be disembarking and embarking guests from Bell Street Pier at Pier 66, for a total of six calls.
 
Celebrity Cruise’s Solstice—one of the most decorated ships at sea—was built in 2008, will be one of the largest cruise ships to berth in Seattle, with an overall length of 1041 feet and a capacity of 2850 passengers.  The Solstice will be making 19 calls, with the bulk of the itineraries being seven day roundtrip cruises departing from Smith Cove Terminal at Terminal 91.
 
Based on economic impact data, it is estimated that each time a homeport cruise vessel docks in Seattle the activity brings an average of over $2 million into the local economy. There are 202 cruise vessel calls scheduled for the 2012 season kicking off on May 6th. The Seattle cruise business supports over 4,000 jobs in the region. 

The report made to the Board details how approximately 13.5 million cubic yards of material produced from the SHEP and needed to raise the site to the elevation required for terminal development can be used to save the Jasper Ocean Terminal time and money. If the Jasper port were required to truck fill material into the site, Moffat & Nichol estimates the cost would be more than $300 million and take an additional two to three years of time to construct.

 “I would like to thank the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) for assisting the JPO’s Project Manager to better understand how together we can save a great deal of time and money in our goal to build the Jasper port,” said Jim Balloun, Chairman, JPO.

At the last meeting of the JPO, July 25, 2011, the Board approved the Moffatt & Nichol work plan for a Dredge Material Management Plan Alternatives Analysis and Sponsor Plan. At the meeting today, Moffat & Nichol briefed the Board on its findings from that study, which included a roadmap to the release of easements on the JOT site currently held by the USACE.

“The study clearly shows that the easements held by the USACE can and will be released well before the time for finance and construction of this project,” said Balloun. “Once again, I would like to personally thank the USACE for working with the JPO to develop an Easement Release Plan that defines the actions necessary to release the easement, and the timing of when various easements can be released.”
 
In addition, Balloun noted that the collaborative work between the Corps and the JPO had not only shown that the placement of SHEP dredge material on the future JOT site would result in more than $335 million in savings for the project, but that the natural deposits of cadmium in the Savannah River basin posed no threat to the project, Georgia or South Carolina. “The Corps along with the JPO’s Project manager have clearly demonstrated that the naturally occurring cadmium is at concentrations well below EPA tolerance levels.”

According to the Corps, tests indicate concentrations average 21.42mg/kg of soil which is well below the EPA tolerance levels of 800 mg/kg for industrial sites and 70mg/kg for residential. The fill on the Jasper site will be capped with a layer of clean sand at least two feet thick, keeping the soil moist and preventing the possibility of airborne transport.

In February 2012, Red Hook successfully deployed Tideworks’ integrated suite of TOS solutions, including the Mainsail Terminal Management System®, Spinnaker Planning Management System®, and Forecast® by Tideworks, its newest, consolidated customer-service web portal.

The Red Hook Container Terminal is a 65.6 acre facility that handles bulk and break-bulk cargos in addition to containers. The terminal is very unique in that part of the facility is located in Brooklyn, NY and part in Port Newark, NJ.  Tideworks implemented its suite of TOS products under a fully hosted Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model at Red Hook. The servers and IT infrastructure supporting the TOS are hosted at Tideworks’ hardened data center in western Washington. Red Hook accesses the software via the internet and receives all the benefits of a modern TOS for a low monthly fee.

“Red Hook is our first TOS customer in the New York-New Jersey harbor,” said Michael Schwank, president of Tideworks. “We are extremely pleased to add Red Hook to our expanding list of dynamic terminals using Tideworks. With this project we have demonstrated once again Tideworks’ ability to deliver our comprehensive TOS solution under a SaaS model, one that requires minimal capital expenditure on the part of the customer to get up and running quickly.”

“We were able to quickly deploy the Tideworks’ system using the SaaS model,” said Michael Stamatis, president of Red Hook Container Terminal LLC. “We couldn’t have chosen a better partner than Tideworks for the implementation of our new TOS systems. We were able to implement and go live with Tideworks’ innovative technology in just four months, enabling us to gain significant enhancements in efficiency and provide service improvements for our customers.”

Key to the successful implementation were Tideworks’ professional services, which included project management, business process analysis, system configuration and set-up, user training, and go-live assistance. On an on-going basis Tideworks is providing its 24/7 software maintenance and technical support as well as its full-service EDI management service (“EDI Porter”). Because it is a SaaS / hosted model, Tideworks handles all services related to the management, monitoring and maintenance of the TOS IT infrastructure.  

Claudio Camargo Penteado, MAFI do Brazil’s CEO, details that the tractor was designed to withstand this type of operation, where the starting and braking is performed hundreds of times per day. ´´The mechanical development and the robust structure ensure precise operation and longer equipment life, as well as greater efficiency and economy in the operations. Multirio´s new acquisition, performed more than a year after the first acquisition, is proof that the operating results are very good. Now the news is that the new terminal tractors come with the MEM (MAFI Economic Mode), an intelligent drive program which detects if the operation is with our without load. MEM shifts gears automatically up at lower engine revolution if there is reduced load detected. This leads to considerable fuel savings, environment-friendly operation and reduced cost of ownership.” says Claudio Camargo Penteado.

The MT25/30 model has the capacity to pull on its fifth wheel up to 30 tons and an increased GCW when pulling a trailer. It has a chassis with reinforced welding and steel that generates durability, and a driver’s cabin with ROPS/FOPS certification, two important European certificates that guarantee the safety of the operators in case accidents occur.

This reorder and other equipment that was recently purchased by Multirio have placed its container terminal on operation levels that are similar to Europe and Asia.