Shipping containers are piling up on the Portland waterfront at a record pace as the state invests millions of dollars into its largest port to encourage Maine’s growing trade links to Europe and the North Atlantic region.
The volume of containers moving through the International Marine Terminal on West Commercial Street has more than doubled in the past five years and so has the value of goods, to $502.7 million last year. Containers full of paper products, candles and cranberry juice are hoisted onto ships bound for foreign ports while cranes unload boxes and boxes of frozen fish from vessels delivering goods to Maine.