by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Rick Ferrin of JaxPort and Hobart Joost of Colliers Dickinson attended the Commercial Real Estate Women of Jacksonville’s luncheon last month held at the Jacksonville Marriott to discuss JaxPort’s deal made with Mitsui OSK Line to bring direct container ship service to Jacksonville from Asia and how it will provide great economic impact to the Jacksonville area.
“Today we have three terminals which include Blount Island terminal, Dames Point terminal and Talleyrand terminal,” said Ferrin. “One of the things about JaxPort that makes us a little bit different than a lot of other ports in the country is that we handle a very broad variety of cargo.”
JaxPort handles dry and liquid bulk, break bulk, vehicles, roll-on, roll-off and containerized cargo, as well as oversized and specialty cargoes.
“We handle about 800,000 TEU’s or 20-foot equivalent containers on an annual basis,” said Ferrin. “What that mean is that we rank as the 11th or 13th busiest container port in the United States. We also handle a lot of roll-on, roll-off cargo.
“On an annual basis, we handle about 600,000 automobiles and pieces of heavy equipment. In that category, we rank second in the United States for roll-on, roll-off cargo. Last, but not least, we handle people. We handle about 130,000 embarkations from Jacksonville on an annual basis.”
Ferrin said JaxPort has concentrated over the last 10 years on getting into the Asian business and having their ports used by Asian traffic.
“If we want to grow as a port and continue to be a very vital economic engine in this region the key was getting into the Asian market,” said Ferrin. “Mitsui OSK Lines has a terminal operator that they call TraPac. TraPac is building the terminal on a 158-acre site that you see as you go across the Dames Point Bridge towards the airport. There is $2 million worth of infrastructure going in and it will be a state-of-the art container terminal run by Mitsui/TraPac terminal operators.”
Ferrin said right now they are sitting at about 775,000 TEU’s but, after the Mitusi/TraPac terminal comes online in December 2008, within a few years they will be handling an additional 800,000 containers.
“When you look at 2012, we anticipate that we should be up around 1.8 million TEU’s,” he said. “So, that is quite significant and it will propel us into one of the top ten ports in the country.”
Ferrin then discussed the benefits of this deal for Jacksonville.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for Jacksonville,” he said. “What this has the potential to do is to make Jacksonville probably the third largest port on the east coast of the United States for containerized cargo and clearly within the top sixth or seventh ports for containerized cargo in the United States.”
Ferrin said the new Mitsui/TraPac terminal will bring almost 5,700 new jobs. That breaks down to 1,800 direct jobs and 3,800 indirect jobs.
“The average salary for those jobs is $45,000 a year, significantly higher than the median wage job in Jacksonville,” he said. “What that equates to in economic impact is $900 million a year.”
With the addition of another port, Ferrin said many are concerned about port security, but he said not to worry.
They have installed a radiation portal monitor that scans every container that leaves JaxPort for radiation. It is the only port in Florida that is in compliance with the Federal security initiative. Also, each port worker undergoes a criminal background investigation and has to carry a photo identification badge.
“We have very good control over who has access to the terminals,” he said.
Ferrin said other carriers have been eyeing Jacksonville as a possible port.
“As we look about eight years out from where we are today, it is entirely conceivable that JaxPort will be handling in excess of three million containers a year,” said Ferrin.
Hobart Joost, an industrial specialist with Colliers Dickinson, said the new terminal will create a demand for distribution space that currently doesn’t exist.
“These are exciting times for Jacksonville,” said Joost, who reported that the new terminal will result in about potentially up to 48 million square feet of new distribution space over the next 10 years. “All that product is coming in containers and some of it gets on the highway or on rail but the rest of it has to go into a warehouse. It’s not only inbound product; there is also outbound product. When a ship leaves here, they fill it up with other cargo going back to Asia.”
Most of the distribution centers are going to be close to the port, but a lot of the land has already been sold.
“All the low hanging fruit has already been picked,” said Joost. “Now we are going out on the fringes of I-295, I-10 and up I-95 to find sites. We have approximately $86 million in industrial land deals with industrial developers either sold, under contract or under negotiations. The Savannah market is 23 million square feet. Our market, depending on who you talk to, is 89 million square feet. Savannah absorbed 6,200,000 square feet in 1996 and we absorbed 1.9 square feet in 1996. Savannah got it first; they have more Asian carriers on call, but now it’s coming here.”
Joost said that 30 years ago the product was manufactured in the United States, but now 80 percent of the product in a Wal-Mart is manufactured in Asia. He said previously the cargo was brought to the west coast, unloaded, put on rail or truck to the east coast consumers.
“Now, due to congestion and west coast ports, labor problems, it takes two or three days to unload a ship,” said Joost. “It’s all time and money. It will be cheaper money-wise and time-wise to send it through the Panama Canal to the east coast where the consumers are. This is the biggest economic engine we’ve seen in a decade and the average guy in the street doesn’t even know it is happening.”