Page 32: of Maritime Logistics Professional Magazine (Nov/Dec 2017)

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Featured Port

NC Ports:

North Carolina Ports are poised to leverage a trifecta of variables, built on explosive growth in the southeastern United States, an ideal and uncongested location and the most powerful agricultural engine on the planet.

By Joseph Keefe t the recent North Carolina Ports Cold Chain

Summit, the port authority’s leadership extolled the port’s ongoing expansion, especially in way of catering to a growing, regional refrigerated

Atransportation market. Located within 100 miles of the largest agricultural producing region in the country – and one of the most effcient in the world – it wasn’t hard to see why. Nor is it rocket science to see what the long term potential for this gateway holds.

With the basic pieces in place, the attractiveness of North

Carolina deepwater ports is manifested in a much simpler met- ric. Contrasting a recent drive up the Eastern Seaboard past

Norfolk to Washington, DC that took three hours longer that it should have on the increasingly crowded I-95 corridor, this writer also made the 210 mile trip from the inland hub of Char- lotte to Wilmington in less than three hours. Much of that north/ south congestion is freight, and much of that is going to or from a port. Too often, that’s not Wilmington or Morehead City.

Local freight, leaving the state for deeper and larger gate- ways, experiences terrifc delays on that same I-95 highway.

For this reason, and many other equally compelling reasons,

North Carolina Ports is beckoning shippers, local farmers and liner companies alike to consider a sea change. That mes- sage is already yielding fruit. That’s because North Carolina is home to the nation’s premier agricultural engine, and the lion’s share of that consists of so-called “cold chain” cargoes that are time sensitive, complex and constitute growth sectors in North Carolina.

32 Maritime Logistics Professional November/December 2017 | |