Victorian premier Denis Napthine has released $110 million towards the Port of Hastings development.
Visiting Hastings with Minister for Ports David Hodgett, Dr Napthine said the money reaffirmed the Victorian Government's belief in the port.
"Decisive action is being taken to build a second Victorian container port and ensure this State remains the freight and logistics capital of Australia.
"We will provide $110 million across the next four years to complete the work required to start building a world-class container port with land-side transport connections at Hastings.
"Containerised trade in Victoria is predicted to quadruple by 2035 and the only way to provide certainty to meet this expected demand is to invest in infrastructure.
"In the 1960s former Premier Sir Henry Bolte had the vision and foresight to set aside almost 4,000 hectares of land at Hastings for future port development.
"With this land and Hastings' status as a naturally deep port, there is no doubt that this is the best option for development to meet our growing freight needs," Dr Napthine said.
The $110 million funding package will enable completion of preferred scope design works transport connection planning preliminary work to support environmental approvals processes business case development, and procurement and delivery strategies.
Mr Hodgett said the Port of Hastings would complement the Port of Melbourne, which was currently undergoing a $1.6 billion expansion of container and automotive capacity.
"Import and export trade is performing strongly with more than $82 billion in trade handled through the Port of Melbourne last financial year, including a national record of 2.58 million containers," Mr Hodgett said.
"This container trade is continuing to grow between five and six per cent annually and is expected to double in the next decade. Without investing to meet future demand, the state will reach capacity by the mid 2020s, even with the benefit of current expansion projects.
"When completed this multi-billion dollar development of the Port of Hastings will ultimately provide capacity for 8 to 9 million containers, which is almost double the current container capacity of the Port of Melbourne," Mr Hodgett said.