Focus on Manatee | Port Manatee’s diverse cargo mix is force driving sustained success

Now more than ever, seaports throughout the world are realizing the strategic importance of maintaining a diverse mix of operations and revenue streams.

Thanks to a concerted effort to not rely too much upon any single sector – carrying out strategies delineated in our recently updated master plan and advanced by the forward-thinking Manatee County Port Authority – Port Manatee has been blessed to sustain success even as other less-diversified ports in Florida and beyond are unfortunately suffering.

In fact, no one Port Manatee customer represents more than 15 percent of our port’s total revenue. Moreover, Port Manatee continues on solid financial footing without levying a single penny of local property tax burden, but rather relying solely upon operating revenues.

In May, our self-sustaining port released results of a new study by Lancaster, Pa.,-based Martin Associates, the globally preeminent leader in such assessments, showing Port Manatee’s annual economic impact at more than $3.9 billion, with the port directly and indirectly generating more than 27,000 jobs. In its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2019, Port Manatee shattered numerous cargo records, including eclipsing 10 million tons of total throughput for the first time in our port’s 50-year history.

Safe operations continue at Port Manatee, with many key cargoes meeting needs that are all the more vital in today’s challenging environment. And the port and its users have further stepped up with moves of critical donations, including tens of thousands of boxes of fruit brought to local food banks and shelters thanks to the generosity of Del Monte Fresh Produce Co.

At Port Manatee, fresh fruits and vegetables remain key cargoes, including bananas, pineapples and avocados imported from Central America by Del Monte and a wide range of produce brought in from Mexico by Port Manatee-based World Direct Shipping. The global gamut of Port Manatee’s significant trade partners extends farther southward to include Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Colombia and Chile and outside the Western Hemisphere to nations from Turkey to Australia.

Port Manatee’s cargo mix ranges from petroleum products to fill our region’s gas tanks; to citrus juices; to fertilizers, granite, limestone, aggregate rock and industrial salts; to aluminum, steel, lumber and wood pulp, with the latter commodity imperative for manufacture of much-in-demand toilet paper.

Furthermore, Port Manatee is a burgeoning hub of project cargo activity, including massive liquefied natural gas heat exchangers fabricated just across U.S. 41 from port property, at the leading-edge manufacturing facility of Air Products. Other oversize, overweight items recently moving across Port Manatee docks include components from Italy for theme park ride construction and nearly 100 units from South Korea for expansion and modernization of Tampa Electric’s Big Bend generating plant in southeastern Hillsborough County.

Port Manatee’s marketing team continues to constantly explore opportunities around the globe to provide still more cargo owners with competitive, customized services while additionally broadening the spectrum of goods moving through Manatee County’s seaport.

In these times and always, be safe and be well.

Carlos Buqueras is executive director of Port Manatee.