After years of fits and starts, Delaware says it is ready to build a new container port on the Delaware River to attract more cargo — and create jobs.
Not so fast, says an operator of ports upriver in Philadelphia and New Jersey.
Affiliates of Gloucester City-based Holt Logistics Corp. filed a last week seeking to block project approvals granted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for construction of Delaware’s proposed terminal in Edgemoor.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Holt and the Pennsylvania agency that owns Philadelphia’s seaports in 2024 successfully persuaded a federal judge to throw out an Army Corps permit authorizing the same project.
But since then, Delaware’s taxpayer-owned Diamond State Port Corp. requested new approvals, and the Army Corps granted them in April. The following month, Diamond State and its private-sector partner, Massachusetts-based Enstructure, announced they were moving ahead with the $669 million project at the site of a former DuPont chemical plant.
They say the new terminal — three miles northeast of the Port of Wilmington — will bring thousands of construction, warehouse, and longshore jobs to the area. Delaware officials estimate the Edgemoor terminal will be able to handle up to 1.2 million container units annually.
That’s one-third more than Philadelphia’s port handled in 2025, a record year. But Philly’s port — a major gateway for refrigerated cargo, especially fresh fruit from Central and South America — is also expanding.
The Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PhilaPort), a state agency, last fall bought a 152-acre yard from Norfolk Southern Corp. for $90 million to create more cargo space.
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A PhilaPort spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit. Diamond State didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“While out-of-state competitors continue their efforts to stop this project, it is time to move forward and make sure Delaware’s port can compete fairly on the Delaware River,” Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez, who as Delaware’s secretary of state serves as Diamond State’s chair, said in May.
Holt — a family-owned company that operates marine terminals in South Philadelphia, Gloucester City, and Paulsboro — now says the Army Corps repeated several mistakes that doomed its earlier approvals.
“Most significantly, the court found that the Army Corps had failed to sufficiently consider the project’s likely impacts on navigation and safety in the Delaware River,” says the suit filed by Holt affiliates Greenwich Terminals LLC and Gloucester Terminals LLC.
“Yet despite the court’s detailed opinion and suggested remedial direction,” it continues, “the Army Corps reissued the project approvals again without conducting a proper evaluation of the applications before it.”
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A spokesperson for the Army Corps declined to comment.