WASHINGTON: Port Everglades has been involved in a pilot program that allows once-restricted grapes and blueberries from Peru and Uruguay to come into South Florida ports, says Ellen Kennedy, assistant director of communications for Port Everglades. “The program is working well and has been expanded to include citrus from Peru and apples and pears from Argentina,” she says. “In the pilot program, fruit can be shipped directly to South Florida and delivered to local grocery stores faster and at a lower cost than shipping through traditional Northern ports.”
U.S. ports and the shippers they work with have changed their approaches to accommodating produce shipments and they are seeing their efforts pay dividends. The Port of Wilmington, Del., is the No. 1 banana port in North America by virtue of Chiquita and Dole having weekly vessel calls there. These “liner” services have been fully containerized for decades and this will not change, said John Haroldson, marketing director for Diamond State Port Corp., which runs the Port of Wilmington. “What is advancing is the move by the specialized reefer operator from pure breakbulk, i.e., palletized shipments, to a greater emphasis on deck-loaded reefer containers,” he said. Haroldson said the port is seeing this to a large extent with Trans Global Shipping’s Chilean Winterfruit cargo, where it was common to have specialized reefers arrive with almost 200 containers on deck in addition to 5,000 pallets under deck. This trend also is starting to appear with the port’s fresh Argentinean apple and pear programs and has been an item of discussion with a Moroccan citrus customer. “The obvious advantage is that this adds capacity and economies of scale for cargo-intensive programs, and this trend is well established in the Chilean trade,” Haroldson said. Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was the port of entry for the first shipment of perishable cargo participating in a new Ocean-to-Air pilot program, which was developed in partnership with Crowley Maritime Corp.’s Miami-based subsidiary Customized Brokers and Miami International Airport. Ellen Kennedy, assistant director of communications for Port Everglades, said the program allows Central American produce to reach European markets faster by expediting turn times and expanding customers’ distribution.“If it’s successful, there may be opportunities to work with other airports in Europe and Asia,” she said.
Port Everglades has been involved in another pilot program that allows once-restricted grapes and blueberries from Peru and Uruguay to come into South Florida ports, Kennedy said. “The program is working well and has been expanded to include citrus from Peru and apples and pears from Argentina,” she said. “In the pilot program, fruit can be shipped directly to South Florida and delivered to local grocery stores faster and at a lower cost than shipping through traditional Northern ports.” Mike Zampa, communications director for the Port of Oakland, Calif., said the port received a $1.6 million incentive fund last year to stimulate night gate use at its marine terminal to ease dayside congestion. The port worked with terminal operators to transform port operations through these extended hours, which in large part expedited refrigerated cargo pickup and delivery. “Agricultural export tonnage has grown a stunning 233% at the Port of Oakland in the last five years,” Zampa said. “The result has transformed the port’s trade profile, making Oakland a leading gateway to Asia — especially for California growers.” In 2016, farm exports shipped from Oakland totaled 3.9 million metric tons — up from 1.2 million metric tons in 2012. California producers accounted for 70% of agricultural exports through the port last year; fruits and nuts are the leading agricultural commodity shipped from Oakland.
AGRO Merchant’s Group, Savannah, Ga., was the first third-party logistics company to receive and store fresh produce (grapes from Peru) at the Port of Savannah, Ga. Ryan Keogh, vice president of planning and integration for AGRO, said there aren’t any fresh produce facilities in Savannah right now, but one is opening this summer. The company had instead been using space in a large frozen facility to process its fresh produce. “The port is continuing to bring in fresh produce, but we aren’t storing it for anyone. Most of it is continuing on to its destination, presumably Atlanta,” Keogh said. Additionally, Keogh said he expects a change to the cold treatment sterilization regulations for the Savannah area soon. “The comment period has ended, but there is a hold on all regulation changes with the current administration that we are hoping will be changed sometime this year,” he said. “That will allow us to complete any cold treatment shipments at our facility and put the Port of Savannah comparable to the (ports of entry) in the Northeast.”
