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Cargo Operations: Alabama

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Alabama: APM Terminals Mobile Commemorates First Jetliner Component Delivery


A320 airliner components at APM Terminals Mobile.
Photo/Alabama State Port Authority

Trucks carrying five sections of the first Airbus A320 passenger jetliner to be assembled in Alabama left the APM Terminals Mobile terminal in a convoy on June 21 for the three-mile final leg of their journey to the new $600 million Brookley Aeroplex

The twin-engine passenger A320 airliners will be the first to be assembled in the United States by the Toulouse, France-based company. Airbus projects output at the Brookley facility at between 40-50 aircraft annually within three years. 

The fuselage and wing components arrived on June 17 aboard the chartered German-flagged BBC Fuji, which transported the Spanish, German and British-manufactured components to Mobile from the Port of Hamburg in Germany. 

Airbus has sold more than 9,400 of these single-aisle aircraft, with another 3,900 on order from the Airbus A320 assembly centers in Germany, China, France and now the United States. 

APM Terminals has been expanding and upgrading the Mobile terminal, which opened in 2008, and will add two new super-Post Panamax STS cranes – along with a yard expansion as part of a $40 million infrastructure investment to increase the terminal’s capacity (Advisory, June 23, 2015). According to the company, the Mobile terminal can now accommodate up to 350,000 TEUs annually with the two cranes currently in service. 

The container facility is operated by APM Terminals under a lease agreement with the Alabama State Ports Authority.

Regular shipments of the Airbus A320 components through APM Terminals Mobile are set to begin within the next few weeks.


Truck prepares to depart APM Terminals Mobile for the Brookley Aeroplex with a fuselage component for first A320 to be assembled in Alabama.
Photo/Alabama State Port Authority
 

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