- Port Tampa Bay celebrated the maiden voyage of one of the largest ships to call on the Port and serve one of our greatest parters in the Tampa Bay area, Tampa International Airport. Vulcan Materials Company's newest vessel, M/V Donald M. James, arrived at Port Tampa Bay on Sunday, July 8 2018 after picking up its first cargo from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Tampa International Airport, undergoing a major capital expansion, is the first of The James' customers.

The limestone cargo is part of a massive year-long airfield pavement reconstruction project at Tampa International Airport that wraps up this year.

The project calls for replacing 5,000 feet of asphalt and concrete on the existing Taxiway W with concrete. When complete, the project will improve the Airport's airfield with better, longer-lasting materials.

The ship carried some 62,000 tons of limestone to make concrete for the project. It will processed into 22,302 cubic yards of concrete - or roughly 2,230 concrete trucks worth - at the Airport onsite concrete batch plant.

An event to welcome the Donald M. James was held Monday, July 9th at Vulcan's berth at Port Tampa Bay.

The James' sister ship, The M/V Ireland, began calling on Port Tampa Bay in April - both have identical stats: and are 750-foot long. Both ships gravity feed cargo discharge systems consist of 260-foot discharge booms capable of unloading 4500 metric tons of cargo per hour.

The ship was built in a Chinese shipyard, designed to be energy efficient and to comply with the latest environmental regulation.

Headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, Vulcan Materials Company is the nation's largest producer of construction aggregates primarily crushed stone, sand and gravel. Vulcan is also a major producer of aggregates-based construction materials, including asphalt and ready-mixed concrete.  Vulcan has been a tenant of Port Tampa Bay since July 1991, leasing 23.4 acres of land adjacent to berth 30 at Pendola Point. Vulcan imports more than one million tons of limestone per year from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula to Port Tampa Bay and is a major supplier to the region's rapidly expanding construction sector.