- GT USA Wilmington, a subsidiary of Emirati company Gulftainer, operated the port since the state privatized it in 2018.
- GT USA’s tenure was marred by financial problems, environmental issues and a failure to advance a planned expansion.
- State officials said switching operators to Enstructure and locking in their investment was critical to protecting the port’s jobs and infrastructure.
The Port of Wilmington will have a new operator “in a matter of days,” state officials announced Wednesday.
Enstructure LLC, a Massachusetts company, received its final approval Tuesday to take over the port. The decision ends the turbulent tenure of GT USA Wilmington, a subsidiary of Emirati company Gulftainer that ran the facility since the state privatized port operations in 2018.
“We’re eager to get in there,” Enstructure Co-CEO Matt Satnick said last week.
State officials have argued in favor of installing Enstructure, saying that the port is in need of immediate investment after GT USA allowed it to deteriorate with few repairs over the past year and a half. Labor leaders said supporting Enstructure was a matter of supporting the thousands of jobs the port supplies the region.
“This is our infrastructure. Delaware. Delaware jobs,” said James Maravelias, president of the Delaware Building and Construction Trades Council. “These are building jobs. We’re not building a highway and it runs and that’s it. This is the ILA expansion. This is the Teamsters expansion. This is the building trades expansion.”
PORT OF WILMINGTON DEAL: Internal docs detail how Delaware landed the new operator
Community members were upset about a selection process they said was not transparent and a lack of public input. They’ve also expressed pessimism over how a planned expansion at the port will be carried out.
“Right now, most of the meetings as they are organized by the state, you make a statement and they typically don’t give you feedback,” said Jeffrey Richardson, chair of the Delaware Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, a collection of community groups advocating for those adversely impacted by investment projects in the state. “We want an exchange. We want a real conversation.”
The Diamond State Port Corporation, a state-owned entity that oversees the port, ultimately voted unanimously on Friday to approve an agreement with Enstructure. That left one final approval: a “concurrence” of a group of Delaware lawmakers and the state controller general.
Those officials, House Speaker Valerie Longhurst, Senate President Pro Tempore David Sokola, Joint Capital Improvement Committee Co-Chairs Rep. Debra Heffernan and Sen. Jack Walsh and Controller General Ruth Ann Miller, gave their yes vote Tuesday.
In a joint statement, Longhurst and Sokola said the port’s workforce is “critical to Delaware” and they look forward to working with Enstructure, “the new long-term operator and investor in one of Delaware’s most important assets.”
What the new deal includes
Enstructure has agreed to spend at least $45 million by 2032 to upgrade the current port. The company estimates it could spend as much as $65 million in the next five years. Its agreement with the port corporation calls for a minimum of $87 million over the 55-year term of the deal.
Enstructure will also make an annual payment to the port corporation starting at $1 million. In exchange, Enstructure will reap any profits the port makes.
The terms of the state’s agreement with Enstructure are less favorable than the terms of the deal they struck with GT USA five years earlier. That agreement called for a minimum annual payment of $3 million and a total investment of $584 million in the port, the planned expansion and additional warehousing.
But GT USA’s promises never materialized.
How the last deal unraveled
In August 2021, Gulftainer executive Peter Richards told employees the company was “losing money all of the time.” As its business faltered, GT USA faced lawsuits from others doing business at the port and environmental and workplace violations. All the while, the state continued spending money on the port even though Gov. John Carney had billed the GT USA deal as a way of “getting out of the business of subsidizing the port.”
The company’s creditors seized control of its board of directors last fall, eventually leading the port corporation to solicit proposals to take over the port.
All told, GT USA Wilmington paid $12 million to the port corporation in concession fees, eliminated $9 million of debt and contributed $80 million in capital investment at the port, according to the port corporation.
Plans for a port expansion
GT USA failed to advance an expansion project known as Edgemoor. The container terminal project, named for the former DuPont site the state acquired in 2016, would greatly expand the port’s capacity and add jobs.
The port corporation began moving the project forward on its own — port officials have earmarked up to $20 million for obtaining and defending permits — even though its agreement with GT USA said the operator should bear the costs.
The permits it received from DNREC now face several challenges from community members and port operators on the Delaware River on environmental and accessibility grounds.
Enstructure will pay a one-time $21.5 million payment toward advancing the Edgemoor project, but there is no timeline for its construction. A press release issued Wednesday says Enstructure will partner with the state “on the potential expansion at Edgemoor.” It notes that Carney has committed $50 million from American Rescue Plan Act funds.
Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock, who serves as the chair of the port corporation board of directors, told board members in an April closed-doors session that the taxpayers will pay at least $100 million for the Edgemoor project, including the ARPA money.
Contact Brandon Holveck at bholveck@delawareonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @holveck_brandon.
