Hoegh Autoliners Inc., which announced in February it would move its Americas headquarters to Jacksonville, has chosen space in the Port Jax Trade Center.
The City approved a construction permit Wednesday for Spinner Construction to build-out 17,688 square feet of office and warehouse space for Hoegh at 2615 Port Industrial Drive in North Jacksonville near the Interstate 295 East Beltway and Alta Road.
The space comprises 11,777 square feet of office space and 5,911 square feet of warehouse space.
Hoegh Autoliners said in February that it decided to relocate all of the office functions from its Jericho, N.Y., location to Jacksonville.
Steinar Lovdal, Hoegh Autoliners president, said in a Feb. 5 letter to "valued business partner" organizations the aim was to complete the relocation by the end of June.
"This will enable us to consolidate our activities in one office location, and to be located in immediate proximity to one of the world's largest automotive ports," he wrote, referring to the port of Jacksonville.
JaxPort owns and manages three public marine terminals and a passenger cruise terminal — the Blount Island Marine Terminal, the Talleyrand Marine Terminal, the Dames Point Marine Terminal and the JaxPort Cruise Terminal.
Port Jax is near the Dames Point and Blount Island terminals.
Lovdal wrote that the sales office in Schaumburg, Ill., and port offices in Port Newark, Wilmington, Baltimore, Galveston and Jacksonville would remain unchanged.
The Port Jax center is owned by Group IV Jaxport LLC, which changed its name to Port Jax 400 LLC.
Bill Spinner is the manager of the limited liability company as well as the managing member of Spinner Construction LLC. Spinner heads Spinner Construction and JAX Green Industrial. The website is jaxgreenindustrial.com
Spinner said Thursday the space will accommodate Hoegh Autoliners' headquarters for North and South America.
He said Hoegh would occupy Suites 405-407 in Building 400.
Spinner said Hoegh would have 35-40 executives and staff at the operation. "It is really nice to listen to how excited the folks are to move to Florida. They are looking
at houses, school districts and will have more
discretionary income in our lower-tax state," he said.
He said Hoegh's goal was to find a site near the Jacksonville port.
"It is a great pickup for Jacksonville since other companies tend to follow. The quality of the executives I met were impressive and decisive," he said.
"Jacksonville is their No. 1 volume port and they wanted to be close to their operations here. There is a lesson here that the larger the volume of TEUs and port traffic, the more ancillary jobs will follow," Spinner said.
Port container traffic measures the flow of containers in 20-foot equivalent units, called TEUs, a standard-size container.
Spinner said the lease fills the park's two existing buildings, allowing him to gear up to develop another.
He said Port Jax Trade Center has Foreign Trade Zone benefits.
The Daily Record reported Feb. 13 that Hoegh Autoliners, a leading provider of roll-on/roll-off vehicle transportation services, planned to move its U.S. and Americas Region headquarters from New York to Jacksonville by June.
Hoegh Autoliners has a branch office in Jacksonville at the Blount Island Marine Terminal and its staff of 20 is expected to increase to about 35 by June, Lovdal said in February.
The Daily Record reported Hoegh Autoliners has been in business for more than 80 years. The company operates about 60 ships in global trade systems that are managed from a network of 30 offices in four regions. Customers include GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Honda, Ford and Caterpillar.
In 2012, Hoegh Autoliners carried about 2.45 million car equivalent units and made more than 4,000 port calls worldwide.
Lovdal said in February the move will enable the company to consolidate its office activities in one location and to be near JaxPort, which reported handling more than 600,000 vehicles in 2012. That made JaxPort the No. 1 port for U.S. vehicle exports.
"The way the company is developing globally, this just made sense. The system becomes more efficient with people working together where we have ships and cargo. The office on Long Island (Jericho) has very little operational activity around us," Lovdal said.
The company will outsource its documentation functions from its New York and Baltimore offices to Norton Lilly, a nationwide ship agency, which has a branch office in Jacksonville.
The Hoeghautoliners.com site describes Hoegh Autoliners as a global company with branch offices in about 30 locations in the world and a broad network of agencies.
Its four regions are Region Americas, Region Europe and Oceania, Region South Asia and Africa and Region East Asia.
Each region has a regional head office with management of the regional trades and operations, as well as a number of local entities.
Region Americas is responsible for activities in North and South America. "We operate outbound trades from the US and Mexico to Middle East and East Asia, Africa and Europe. Our inbound trades cater for cargo from East Asia to both South and North America, and from Europe to US and Mexico," it says.
"We operate a feeder service in the Caribbean that offers a broad range of destinations from both East Asia and Europe via our hub terminal in Kingston, Jamaica," it says.
The site says Hoegh Autoliners Region Americas operates terminals in the ports of New York, Baltimore, Wilmington, Jacksonville and Galveston and that its main export customers are GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Honda, Ford and Caterpillar, in addition to smaller manufacturers and a large number of shippers of used cars and heavy equipment.
The headquarters of Region Europe is in Oslo, Norway.
Hoegh Autoliners defines East Asia as China, Japan and South Korea and its regional headquarters is in Tokyo.
Region South Asia and Africa consists of Africa, the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and Southeast Asia. The regional headquarters is in Dubai with other main offices in Durban, Mumbai and Singapore.
Hoegh has its roots in Norway. Leif Hoegh founded the company in 1927.
In 2006, the Hoegh company was restructured into two entities — Hoegh Autoliners and Hoegh LNG, with a common holding company, Leif Hoegh & Co. Ltd.
Hoegh Fleet Services maintains ship management.
Lovdal is president of Hoegh Autoliners and head of Region Americas.
Mayo, Wilkerson construction
The City issued permits for:
• Danis Construction LLC to build the foundation for the 14,000-square-foot Mayo Clinic Florida dialysis center at Mayo's Southside campus. The foundation project, at 4658 Worrall Way, carries a construction cost of $333,000.
• Auld & White Constructors LLC to renovate 1,194 square feet of space, at a project cost of $66,200, for the Law Office of Gerald Wilkerson in EverBank Center at 301 W. Bay St., No. 1060.
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