This commentary appeared in the print edition of the Jan. 6, 2020, Journal of Commerce Annual Review and Outlook.
The past year has seen milestones of epic proportions for Port Tampa Bay. The addition of three new direct Asia container services provided a giant leap forward in serving Florida’s largest and fastest growing market, the Tampa Bay–Orlando Interstate 4 Corridor.
This is not surprising since this region is also one of the hottest industrial real estate markets in the country and Florida’s hub for distribution, logistics, and manufacturing. Home to nearly half of Florida’s population of 21 million residents, and welcoming a majority of the more than 126 million tourists who visit every year, the I-4 Corridor has the largest concentration of distribution centers (DCs) in the state. This exploding market is fueling demand for everything from retail, e-commerce, and food and beverage to energy products and construction materials. To keep pace with this rapid growth, we are busy expanding terminal capacity with additional paved storage, extended berths, cranes and equipment, and new transload warehouse facilities.
Port Tampa Bay is excited to have welcomed CMA CGM and APL, COSCO Shipping and OOCL, Evergreen Line, and Maersk Line and Sealand to its family of carriers offering new services last year, joining established carrier partners ZIM Integrated Shipping, Mediterranean Shipping Co., Trans-Gulf, and Seacat.
For the beneficial cargo owners in our immediate backyard, this was especially good news. These companies are seeing significant savings in their supply chain distribution costs as truckers can now make as many as three to four round-trip deliveries per day from Port Tampa Bay to their DCs, which then service the entire state and reach into markets throughout the Southeast and beyond.
Together with partners like container terminal operator Ports America and cold storage specialist Port Logistics Refrigerated Services, Port Tampa Bay is expanding infrastructure and capacity to ensure we are well positioned for continued strong growth. In keeping with our master plan, Port Vision 2030, we continue to align our capital investment to sustain and grow our core lines of business, while also capturing new business through strategic diversification into additional new markets and commodities.