Officials on Friday turned the ceremonial shovels on a $365 million expansion to a seaport terminal operated by the International Transportation Service container company. Officials say the project will help the Port accommodate more inbound ships, reinforce the nation’s Pacific Rim trade and create hundreds of local jobs using materials sourced from the region.
If all goes to plan, the South Slip Fill Project begins this month and will finish by December 2028.
Construction will consist of filling in 19 acres of open channel, extending the wharf by 560 feet. That will bring the total length of the dock to 3,500 feet and the terminal to 277 acres.
With that added space, crews will install cranes and other crane equipment to berth up to ultra-large ships (18,000 twenty-foot equivalent containers, or TEUs at a time), resulting in a half million more containers moved through the terminal annually.
Mario Cordero, chief executive of the Port of Long Beach, said at a groundbreaking ceremony Friday that the expansion binds ties between the Port and ITS to a stronger point than “it was nearly 20 years ago, when it became our first to sign a green lease.”
“By ‘building more America now,’ ITS is also building more land for the Port of Long Beach while expanding capacity and driving efficiency on its terminal,” he said.
Officials expect the work to bring three years of local construction jobs. Materials are local, too, with rock sourced from Catalina Island, asphalt and concrete pilings from U.S. producers and sediment dredged from the surrounding harbor.
“This project strengthens America’s supply chain by investing in infrastructure the right way — using local labor and U.S.-made materials,” said ITS Long Beach CEO Kim Holtermand. “We’re not just preparing for the future — we’re building it here, at home.”
The expansion is the latest in a series of planned upgrades. Crews are still at work on the first on-dock rail system at the Port of Long Beach, a $1.6 billion dollar endeavor, which broke ground last July and is scheduled to finish by 2032. Officials say they have planned $3.2 billion in infrastructure improvements over the next decade.
It also comes at a strange time for the Port, subject to dual narratives of extraordinary gains in container volume and rising tariffs that threaten its rise as the busiest seaport in the nation.
The Port celebrated an extraordinary 2024-25 fiscal year that saw the volume of cargo handled by the Long Beach port jump 20.3% to about 9.6 million TEUs. The Port has moved 4,042,228 TEUs during the first five months of 2025, up 17.2% from the same period in 2024.
But trade declined 8.2% in May due to tariffs and retaliatory orders that shocked shippers before being temporarily paused. Despite a budget, which begins Oct. 1, that is 9.5% higher than last year, operating revenue this coming fiscal year will drop nearly 2% due to fears over the current and future tariffs, officials say.
“We are monitoring the development of the new trade policies and the effects on our dockworkers and others across the supply chain,” said Long Beach Harbor Commission President Bonnie Lowenthal. “We are staying in close contact with our customers and other port stakeholders as they work to handle the ongoing changes in trade.”