MSC Cruises announced details of a new innovative cruise ship terminal at PortMiami that is due to support company's expanding North American presence, in particular in the Caribbean.
The agreement received approval from Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday, April 9. According to it, MSC Cruises will design, build, operate and maintain a large building which hosts 2 cruise terminals (AA and AAA) and 2 berths. Designed by award-winning global architecture company Arquitectonica, the exclusive new PortMiami terminals of MSC will be able to host 2 mega cruise ships at the same time, allowing the cruise line to conduct 2 turnaround operations simultaneously and handle up to 28,000 cruise passenger movements per day.
Currently, MSC Cruises operates 4 ships from PortMiami: MSC Armonia and MSC Seaside year-round, MSC Divina seasonally, and MSC Meraviglia (due to join this fall) seasonally. With the new facilities, MSC will bring a total of 1 million guests through the port per year.
Work on the new cruise terminals will start in early 2020. The cruise line estimates that the work will be finished by late 2022, at which time it will transfer all PortMiami operations to the new MSC terminal.