But clogged intermodal facilities and the rising cost of cross-country transport has prompted at least one West Coast box terminal major, Trapac, to look for its own exclusive-user terminal on the US East Coast, where existing container terminals are already operating at near capacity.

TraPac may also be positioning itself should, as many predict, India emerge as the next global centre of manufacturing. Goods shipped from South Asia, for example, would be more logically processed on the US East Coast than at its existing West Coast operations.

Given that sites to build dedicated user terminals are notably in short supply on the East Coast, TraPac was forced to consider projects incorporating decidedly difficult terrain. The Dames Point development at the Port of Jacksonville would not normally have been an obvious choice for a box terminal, concedes Richard Clarke, Halcrow's market sector director for containers. However, port authority consultants HPA, now part of the Halcrow Group, identified this as the best available location for a deep sea container terminal.

Jacksonville already has existing box handling facilities at Blount Island and Talleyrand, but both are at capacity and neither can accommodate today's largest deep sea container vessels. The best alternative site, at Mayport on the mouth of the river, is already occupied by the US Navy. HPA therefore had to consider less than perfect alternatives.

The space between the existing bulk terminal and the cruise terminal at Dames Point was the next best choice, although Mr Clarke concedes that several other potential development sites do also exist along the river. Other interested operators are said to be watching the existing project with keen interest; its success could trigger a number of similar schemes.

“The ground conditions at Dames Point, which is surrounded by swamp, are surprisingly good as the site is on an old sand bank. There is, however, a major issue concerning water run-off and drainage from the surrounding swamp areas. This has prompted us to put in very large water storage ponds behind the terminal. These take the peaks off the flows in the swamps, but also helps us to divert water around the back of the terminal,” he explains.

Both TraPac and the Port of Jacksonville were made well aware that the wet conditions mean that there is a risk that the site will continue to settle after constriction and some repaving may be needed. This possibility has been factored into the overall developmental cost, which will see the port authority injecting around $200m into the initial development. A new quay wall has been constructed for the terminal, taking the large loads from the container cranes and allowing the berths to be dredged for larger ships.

HPA Halcrow, observes Mr Clarke, was regarded by the port authority as representing a safe pair of hands, which is something required when undertaking a major project on variable ground conditions. Any miscalculation at the planning stage can produce problems further down the line that risk large cost overruns.

As for funding the project, Jacksonville was extremely fortunate in that the bond issue used to fund Dames Point was undertaken prior to the current credit crunch. The $200m raised is buying 750 metres of quay with alongside draught of 13 metres and a total operating area of 720,000 square metres.

“In addition to the engineering difficulties, Dames Point also required six or seven official consent approvals covering such areas as environmental impact, drainage, transport and so on. In order to satisfy the permitting procedure, we had to make some changes to our overall design, prior to producing final cost estimates and agreeing the eventual layout of the terminal with Trapac. We then had to project manage the construction.”

Mr Clarke reveals that one of the issues that had to be addressed was light spill. However, this was not in respect of surrounding residential areas - there are none - but rather to reduce possible irritation of surrounding wildlife.