NATCHEZ — Officials with Genesis Energy said last week the company is on the way to being able to handle as many as 36,500 rail cars annually at its terminal in Natchez by the end of the year.

Speaking during the company’s second quarter 2013 earnings call, Genesis Energy President Steve Nathanson said the company has expanded its customer base at the Natchez terminal since starting operations earlier this year.

“We began handling cars for a second customer in July and are on track to be able to efficiently handle 100 cars per day by the end of this year,” Nathanson said.

The company — which broke ground on its first loading facility at the Tessenderlo Davison Chemical terminal, which the company owns, last August — announced in May it would be expanding on those initial operations. The expansion includes adding 60 railcar slots to the 40 slots that were made available in the first phase of construction.

The company’s Natchez terminal is for the loading and unloading of bitumen products shipped by rail from Canadian petroleum operations.

Genesis Energy’s board chairman, Grant Sims, said some work is being done now to convert some of the onsite tanks for future expansion so the tanks can handle the vapors associated with moving crude oil so products from the Gulf Coast market can be directed to Canada on the cars used to bring down the bitumen.

“All of that work should be done by the end of the year,” Sims said.

The petroleum products Genesis Energy handles are being moved out of the port by barge, Sims said.

“The new customer that we referenced has started bringing cars in July, and we have, in essence, a bundled service,” he said. “We unload the cars, move it through tanks, and they’ve contracted with us to use our barges to load at Natchez and take it to their refineries.”

During the second quarter 2013, Genesis Energy had a net income of $26.9 million, up from $18.6 million for the same period in 2012.