TraPac Inc., a Port of Los Angeles terminal operator that has had expansion plans stymied by environmental opposition, is losing its last two big customers from its aging and cramped complex.

The move, which represents a loss of $70 million in annual business, is the latest blow to a terminal that lost three significant customers late last year amid struggles to get its delayed expansion project under way.

It shines a spotlight on the difficulty of expanding the port – despite expected threefold growth in cargo volume in the next two decades.

“That just cost us 50 percent of our business,” said Frank Pisano, vice president of the TraPac terminal. “We can’t even compete at the existing terminal that we have.”

U.S. Lines, based in Santa Ana, and ANL Container Line, based in Melbourne, Australia, informed the terminal operator this month they would be relocating to the SSA terminal in Long Beach by April 1.

The news comes after three Asian shipping lines announced plans last summer to leave the terminal for the Port of Long Beach. In a letter announcing the move, the companies said they “have no choice but to leave TraPac” after waiting years for an expansion that still had not materialized.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way for TraPac.

With an expansion and modernization project tentatively scheduled to begin later this year, the port had hoped TraPac could usher in a new era of environmentally friendly building. But before any ground has been broken, challenges from environmentalists and community groups are threatening to delay the project for months – perhaps even years.

Despite TraPac’s troubles, overall business at the Port of Los Angeles isn’t much affected. The problem is TraPac’s setbacks portend that the port will be unable to grow fast enough to handle an expected increase in cargo in the coming years.

“I think we’ve lost the political will to build new port capacity and the rail and highway infrastructure which must go with it,” said Douglas Tilden, chief executive of San Francisco-based terminal operator Marine Terminal Corp., during a speech last month that addressed Southern California port capacity.

Legal action

The Port of Los Angeles last attempted an expansion project in 2001. That effort – a modernization of the China Shipping Container Lines Co. terminal – became a debacle, drawing a lawsuit from environmentalists that took two years to settle.