Industrial property developer CenterPoint is to build a 315,810-square foot warehouse four miles from the Port of Savannah and a logistic park in Joliet near Chicago.

An 8.7-acre storage yard is to be built at the Joliet logistics park for new tenant California Multimodal. The wheeled storage yard will have secure fencing, 40 block heater receptacles and an office building when it opens this autumn.

California Multimodal will pull containers between the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe intermodal terminals, and many distribution centres in the park, as well as to other customer locations in the region, reported American Shipper.

The US port of Savannah has seen overall port traffic rise 15 per cent in the first 10 months of the fiscal year as many shippers rerouted cargo to avoid port congestion on the west coast related to the longshore labour contract dispute.

Port industry officials expect Savannah and other southeast ports will continue to see a bump in traffic, albeit at lower levels than during the eight-month port slowdown, as shippers opt to reallocate some of their Asia imports to other gateways in search of more reliable transit times, especially after the Panama Canal expansion is completed next year.