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Port Tampa Bay – Strength in Diversity

Jun 21, 2018

Port Tampa Bay is Florida’s largest port – both in terms of tonnage, as well as geographic area – encompassing over 5000 acres and handling nearly 40 million tons of cargo per year. What really sets the port apart however, is the diversity of its lines of business that include a wide range of commodities moving in containers, bulk and break bulk ships such as construction and building materials, consumer goods, food and beverage items, as well as energy products. Port Tampa Bay is also a major cruise homeport welcoming almost 1 million passengers per year and is an important hub for shipbuilding and repair. What continues to drive the port’s business is its preferred location at the geographic center of the State and thus the closest port to Florida’s largest and fastest growing market, the Tampa Bay/Orlando I-4 Corridor. Home to almost half of Florida’s over 20 million residents, and welcoming the majority of the more than 100 million tourists who visit Florida every year, the Central Florida region is a huge and expanding consumer market. Port Tampa Bay’s proximity to the major global trade lanes, including Latin America and Asia via the expanded Panama Canal, makes it ideally positioned to handle Florida’s growing export and import activity.

To serve this growing market, Port Tampa Bay and container terminal operator partner Ports America have invested in post-Panamax cranes and have phased build-out plans to quadruple the size of this deep-water terminal as the business continues to grow. Another recent facility development was the opening of a new state of the art on-dock refrigerated warehouse by Port Logistics Refrigerated Services, constructed to serve the region’s growing appetite for food and beverage products and the significant grocery retail presence in the I-4 Corridor region, as well as the rest of the State of Florida, the Southeastern U.S. and beyond.