Major projects flowing toward PortMiami

PortMiami is undergoing major upgrades and expansions, including building new cruise terminals, adding a third berth to MSC Cruises’ Terminal AA, buying more ship-to-shore cranes and completing the second phase of its electric rubber tire gantry cranes program.

The projects will involve both the cargo and cruise side of the industry.

The seaport has secured more than $97 million in combined state and federal grants over the last five years to assist with its Capital Improvement Program. Among these grants are $19.5 million from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to help fund Berth 10 and $19.7 million from the Florida Department of Transportation and $2 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help fund the shore power program that was launched in June 2024.

“What shore power does is it allows, when a cruise ship pulls alongside, for them to turn off their primary engines and plug into our local grid,” PortMiami Director and CEO Hydi Webb said. “So, allowing a reduction of emissions locally here, and we’re the only seaport in the state of Florida to have a shore power program. As a matter of fact, we’re the only port other than Bayonne on the whole entire East Coast that has a shore power program… It’s a program that our mayor initiated, and we are extremely, extremely proud of it.”

As for the new berth, which is a ship’s allotted place at a wharf or dock, it will be on the east end of the port and its estimated completion date is in the fall of 2028.

“As it relates to cruise, we’ll be building our Berth 10, which will be the third berth part of the new MSC Cruise terminal that opened up last year in April of ’25,” she said. “That is our first, actually, airport-style cruise terminal here at the seaport; the traditional model for cruising is one cruise ship, one terminal, but the MSC facility that opened up last April, I call it an airport style because it’s one terminal that can accommodate, ultimately, three different vessels from two different cruise lines. So right now, two of those berths are open, and we’ll be building out the third one by the end of 2028.”

“We’re also working on our North Bulkhead projects,” Ms. Webb continued. “So six of our cruise berths on the north side need to be reconstructed, and that’s a seven-year project where we’ll be taking out one cruise berth each summer, starting in summer of 2027.”

Over the last seven years, she said, the port has built five new mega cruise terminals “that really have become like architectural wonders for this cityscape.”

“But we’re not stopping,” Ms. Webb added, “because we’re continuing to build new cruise terminals. So on the north side of the port, we’re currently under construction for a new cruise Terminal G on the west end of our port for Royal Caribbean cruises and for Celebrity, and we’ll be able to accommodate their next generation of vessels capable of processing up to 7,000 passengers. And that terminal will be completed in late 2027, December of 2027, so that’s very exciting.”

The seaport also plans to order more ship-to-shore cranes, which are a type of large dockside gantry crane used in port operations to load and unload cargo containers from ships.

“So on the cargo side, we have 13 electric – we call them ship-to-shore gantry cranes,” she said, “And yes, we will be procuring, hopefully putting out a procurement this year to purchase some new gantry cranes.”

In addition, the port is completing the second phase of its eRTG – electric rubber tire gantry cranes – program with South Florida Container Terminal to convert the yard from manual top pick operations to an eRTG operation.

“The Port of Miami is a 520-acre island, and so we are densifying the port, and what that means is we’re building the port higher,” Ms. Webb said. “So with this eRTG infrastructure that we’re putting in the South Florida Container yard, with their partnership and their investment, allows us to stack the containers higher as well as move the containers more efficiently and do more efficient runs within their yard. That project will be finished this summer.”

The seaport continues to make progress on its cold storage and sanitizing hub in collaboration with Miami International Airport.

“We just had a groundbreaking for it, actually this last July of ’25, so six months ago or so, and this is going to be, this is in partnership with the Miami International Airport,” she said, “We received some federal grant funding for this facility, and it’s a state-of-the-art, phytosanitary and cold chain facility. It’s one of the handful that exist in this country, so we’ll be able to use new innovative technology, particularly X-ray technology, to treat a wide range of perishable commodities as they come in and out of South Florida, whether it’s through the airport or through the seaport.”

Technology has been a top priority for the port, specifically for the tracking and monitoring of the movement of goods through the supply chain, Ms. Webb said. The seaport partnered with the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority as part of the Public Innovation Challenge. It’s working with three companies to enhance cargo visibility and provide operational insights.

Argu, one of the companies, will monitor and analyze container movements and the safety of port operations through incidents involving cargo handling equipment and cargo movement, allowing new insights into the flow of cargo at PortMiami. Conbo.ai, another company, will provide visibility into movement of cargo trucks on-port, which will assist in improving cargo operations. Lastly, GridMatrix will tackle traffic congestion using AI computer vision, allowing the port to predict bottlenecks and implement data-driven solutions.

“So technology and staying ahead of technology to process goods, whether the goods are merchandise or the people in and out of this port, it’s been extremely important to us,” Ms. Webb said. “We’re always looking at what’s out there next from a technology standpoint, and we have partnered with the Miami-Dade Innovation Authority to foster more cargo visibility out here at the seaport and that’s a lot of AI work, but through camerawork, where we can recognize bottlenecks in our traffic flow with cargo, where they’re staying in line longer and things like that, that we can improve our internal operations. So it’s a lot of tracking and monitoring of the movement of goods through our supply chain, both internally here in the port and outside of the port.”