Raritan Central expansion

Well, responding to my past self on this thread...

Sir Ray wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 11:56 am 1) Referring back to my January post in this thread on Yanuzzi Materials, does anyone know the track layout? Is it just a siding alongside the Felxi Storch building, multiple tracks, does the trackage angle SW along the facility border?

I was on Google aerial recently, and decided to check the Raritan Center views. The images have been updated, including the view of Yanuzzi I described in my post above.
To now answer my own question , they used the same track routing as before (same trackage maybe)), and as of the time of the relatively recent aerial image load the gondola(s) at the northern portion of the property (where the trackage curves South after crossing the bridge over Mill Brook. They created an access road by embedding the trackage in gravel, and whether they will continue to use this layout (which seems to only allow loading one gondola at a time), or improve/relocate it remains to be seen.

The construction on the spurs for Arizona Tea as of roughly a month and a half ago.

Interestingly enough (well, to me anyway), you date that image as of a month and a half ago, but the Nov 2021 (arrived at the end of October for me) - yes I know its snail-pace and all that, but they actually have an image on page 6 of Raritan Central pulling a TBOX from the newly completed Arizona on September 16, 2021 (according to the caption - well, i guess that's about a month and a half ago). Judging from the Railpace image, the Arizona facility would be in the right of your image, hidden by the trees.
Addendum:
Someone mentioned this was near the Home Depot DC, so Arizona hasn't moved since before 2014 according to Google Street. Also according to Google street, this 'Caboose' (actually a repurposed shipping container) appears, and while it is labeled for "Arizona, Brooklyn and Edison" google marks it as Arizona Express Railways. Okay...

Was not aware that it was close to finishing. Either that could have been an overflow car for Home Depot, or they're only getting boxcars as of now.

The plan I'm pretty sure for the facility is to take in tanks of corn syrup and hoppers of plastic(?), and ship out finished product. Unless that has changed.

I take that back I saw the photo in railpace. My apologies for doubting.

Anyway. Here's an update as of November 13th. Seems like all the track is basically done but probably still a few more touches on infrastructure to unload product.

Arizona still uses high fructose corn syrup, while Snapple (its main competitor) has switched to natural sugar.
Gold Peak and Lipton Pure Leaf (Coca Cola and Pepsi respectively) are also all natural sugar as is Joe's Ice
Tea (brewed and bottled locally in Union Township). All are premium or upper tier brands.

Arizona has a basic liquid concentrate of tea, flavor and coloring, which is mixed at the bottling plant with
water and corn syrup.

Interesting, I guess a daily operation? Freight cars everyday?

RC runs Monday-Friday and sometimes on Saturdays. Chasing them is extremely difficult IMO.

The NJDOT is looking to rebuild the port directly adjacent to RCs transload terminal. They are advertising direct rail access…

https://www.state.nj.us/transportation/ ... roject.pdf

Raritan Centrals website also has information on the port, but it’s old and it seems they had different ideas than what the NJDOT has in mind…

https://raritancentralrr.com/pdf/new/do ... ipping.pdf

I didn't read the details but it sounds like the Raritan Port won some federal designation that allows it to apply for federal grants to upgrade the port, so that will be quite a while until something happens. The State of NJ certainly doesn't have any deep pockets for this. The port web site given above makes it sound like maybe trucks or containers will be floated on barges from Port Raritan over to NY avoiding the bridges and tunnels. Hard to imagine how that would be cheaper or faster than bridges and tunnels, even with bridge and tunnel tolls and traffic.

Raritan Central shows what I think are rail routes to Port Newark/Howland Hook area, presumably using the connector from the Raritan biz park over to Perth Amboy (which hasn't seen a train in a long long time, if ever (someone correct me)), and from there up the Chemical Coast to the major ports. What's the idea? The freight will get transloaded once by Raritan Central at Port Raritan and then again at the ports. Somebody explain.

They also show ocean-going shipping going up and down the east coast in/out of Port Raritan, perhaps transloaded to/from rail. I guess the idea is to get the business from ships that are too small for Port Newark to be interested in, and which is too low cost for CSX to be interested in. I'm skeptical, but you never know unless you try, and often eventually someone finds, even by accident, a new niche where they can compete.
Good luck to them.

The ships coming into the ports are getting bigger. The new River Bridge won't be able to get a container ship in there. The idea that he has of transloading containers from a large ship to barges out at sea most likely won't work out either. The company being considered to run the port operations there is already skeptical about how this is going to work logistically and with the unions, or lack thereof.

Which company is that? And will it matter if RC isn’t unionized while the port isn’t?

And yeah I don’t really see this being anything too terribly big. The idea of bringing big container ships in is also flawed. New bridge opening is only gonna be so wide and I don’t know how deep the bay is.

They can do intermodal on barges and I can kinda see the appeal of doing it within walking distance of all these big distribution centers. Thing is, is it feasible? The DOT thing mentions bringing stuff out of this port to the Hudson River. Which I can kinda see them doing but only for very specific/niche things.

When I get the chance I gotta look into this more.

Forgot to mention. The RC website link about intermodal shipping is much older than the DOT project, and both seem to have different ideas on what to do with the port.

I do not know if the same people who came up with the intermodal idea are still at RC. Talk about big ambitions though!

Container barges run out of Norfolk to Richmond, Baltimore, and Philadelphia and between Port NY & NJ and Boston and have for years, so the market for moving containers domestically by barge is known and well established (the first of the modern container ocean going service was NY/NJ to Houston to get around ICC limits on truck companies). Coastal container ships are much smaller than the Panamax (and larger) ships typically used for trans-Atlantic services.

SIMS Metals still has a huge scrap iron pile in Port Newark. I'd be surprised if the Port Authority wouldn't want that land for more container handling. A Port Raritan might be a good solution for handling bulk commodities like scrap and salt. Bulk cargo ships are also smaller in volume than container ships, so maybe the bridges wouldn't interfere with capacity.

SIMS has a shore to ship operation by the Cross Harbor in Bayonne.