GT USA, the US subsidiary of Sharjah-based ports operator Gulftainer, has signed a preliminary agreement with the US state of Delaware to exclusively operate and develop the Wilmington Port for 50 years.

According to Gulftainer, the terms of the agreement are to be formally approved by the Delaware General Assembly and the Diamond State Port Corporation Board, which owns the site of a potential new container terminal, in May.  The Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) will then undertake a formal review of the agreement terms.

Gulftainer plans to invest $580m in the port over the next nine years, including approximately $410m for a new 1.2 million twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) container facility at DuPont’s former Edgemoor site, which was acquired by Diamond State Port Corporation in 2016.

These investments are designed to more than double the port’s container volumes of 350,000 TEUs a year.

Wilmington Port, which started operations in 1923, is the top North American port for imports of fresh fruit into the US, and has the largest dockside cold storage facility in the country. The port is estimated to be a four-hour voyage from the Atlantic Ocean.

Gulftainer currently operates the Canaveral cargo terminal in Florida, after winning a 35-year concession in 2015. As part of these operations, the company has also been providing services to the US space industry, including contracts with Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

In addition to operating container terminals in Khorfakkan and Sharjah, Gulftainer operates ports across the Middle East, Europe and the Americas with projects in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Brazil and the US.