Berkley Bush Cargo Distribution Centre – Container Yard Construction

On behalf of Port Authority of the Cayman Islands (PACI), we wish everyone a pleasant Christmas and prosperous New Year.

January 2nd, 2018 PACI will be turning over a large section of our container yard to McAlpine to begin the required construction for the Rubber Tire Gantry (RTG) operational area. PACI will not have access to this space till May 2018 when the RTGs are commissioned into service. The yard construction project includes:

• Raising the elevation of the yard;
• Improved drainage;
• Concrete area for container storage;
• Concrete runways for the RTGs to travel on;
• Dedicated paved truck lane and;
• Paving of the entire area for a safe and efficient operations.

During this period, PACI will have to modify our operational methods to accommodate storage of empty and full units. The following are the key actions that we will implement:

• Empty storage quotas will be enforced. Therefore, shipping lines are encouraged to take out empties on all vessels as PACI will not have empty storage overflow areas;
• Full unit storage stacks will expand from 2 wide/3 high to 4 wide/4 high – this will increase the delivery time to “dig” out the needed unit;
• Units may remain at the dock for an extra day depending on space availability at our container yard;
• Increased movement of empty units to the dock days before the vessel ops is scheduled;
• There is no impact on full refrigerated units.

PACI is excited for the arrival of the 38 containers containing the 2 RTG units. In March 2018, the assembling of the machinery will begin and PACI is sure everyone will be amazed witnessing this historic time of growth for us and the Cayman Islands, alike.

January 2018 will bring on testing of the Yard Management system with a partial “Go-Live” in March 2018 and the full “Go-Live” taking place May 2018 with the commissioning of the RTGs. This system will change PACI operational methods adding the following:

• Trucker Gate In/Gate Out pre-booking/scheduling for all returns and collection of units;
• Pre-booking for all export loaded units;
• Shipping line, trucking company and customer website portals;
• Shipping lines booking all units to be loaded on a vessel along with stow plan creation and submission;
• Exact location tracking for each unit in the container yard;
• Dedicated traffic flow for trucks in the container yard;
• Dedicated assigned address locations for collecting/returning of units to the container yard;
• All PACI machinery will have tablets with full operational information provided live and;
• Many more features and enhancements to our services.

After many years of concept, planning and design PACI is excited about bringing this project to fruition as we enter the building and implementation phase. Your support and patients during this phase is much appreciated as we work to further improve the safety and efficiency of our container yard operations, whilst reaching for our goal of being the “Elite Port of Excellence”.

As the project progresses we vow to keep you informed through PACI social media sites, as well as, our website.