Port of Corpus Christi Rail Yard Improvements Near End
The Port of Corpus Christi's yearslong effort to modernize its 43-mile rail network will wrap up in four months, just ahead of the grand opening of M&G Resins' massive plastics plant, port officials said Jan 17.
The nation's fifth-largest port will have spent $46 million — with state, local and federal money — on the project by April 22. That's expected to be the final day of the rail system's two-phase face-lift.
"Improving our rail yard is crucial to ensuring our port's ability to grow in the future," said Sean Strawbridge, the port's deputy executive director and chief operating officer.
Speaking Jan. 17 during the port authority's regular commission meeting, Strawbridge said he expects the port to see a return on its investment in the railroad system within 10 years.
The first phase wrapped in April 2015 and included an interchange yard of four parallel tracks with a combined length of 15,400 feet. It also gave the port the ability to form 150-car unit trains.
Costs for that phase totaled $17.8 million, $10 million of which was paid for with a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER, discretionary grant. The rest was covered by the port and the four rail companies that use the track — Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern, Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Genesse & Wyoming.
The second, more costly phase called for extending the four tracks that were completed during the first phase and building four more rails. That portion of the project cost about $28 million. Three-fourths of the work — about $22 million of it — also was paid for with port authority reserves, as well as money from the Texas Department of Transportation.
The added track and storage space can't come soon enough.
Mauro Fenoglio, the global manufacturing director for M&G Chemicals, described construction of its plant on Nueces Bay as being in its "final stages" and on pace for a grand opening in the spring. He told the port authority he expects to ship out the first product from the 412-acre facility by May.
When completed, the facility will be the world's largest single-line producer of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, and purified terephthalic acid, or PTA. Both are materials used to make plastics.
Fenoglio's forecast comes as M&G is fighting liens and lawsuits filed since December by several contractors who claim they haven't been paid for their work.
Fenoglio said the company has replaced some of those contractors and hopes to resolve the disputes soon.
