World Trade - October 2008 - (Page 46)

LOGISTICS SITE SELECTION >> Logistic Features in the Midwest Community Proﬁle: Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana “The ease of access to South Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, and a capable, motivated workforce made Tangipahoa Parish an ideal place for us to do business.” — Chris Ryan, Boh Bros. Labeled the “Crossroads of the South,” Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana has a lot to live up to. However, they’re quick to provide quality references. With distribution centers for Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Entergy, and Allegiance Pharmaceuticals, the area takes advantage of being at the intersection of I-12 and I-55 providing the best direct routes to Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Chicago and many large metros in-between. The Parish also boasts extensive rail connections to 6 Class I RRs and small to large-sized industrial sites with rail access. In fact, the 2900-acre Zachary Taylor Mega Site provides both interstate and rail access while being located in the Congressionallydesignated Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone and a New Markets Tax Credit Census Tract, it offers the most aggressive set of business incentives in US history. Another attribute for the area is its immediate access to the deepwater ports of New Orleans, Baton Rouge and South Louisiana via rail or interstate highway. Port Manchac offers a unique local multimodal opportunity for warehousing and ﬂat barge transportation with access to interstate and rail with rail car storage. Major commercial airports in New Orleans and Baton Rouge are within a 45 to 60-minute drive with a general aviation airport within the Parish. Within an hour’s drive, there are 13 universities, colleges and community colleges that provide Tangipahoa Parish with diverse educational opportunities as well as an energetic and qualiﬁed workforce. Louisiana ranks #1 in worker productivity in manufacturing in the country and the region offers a well-balanced mix of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers with 50,389 workers in the Parish and 670,472 in a 60-mile radius. The average wage and salary differential is well below the national average due to the lower cost of living in the area. The low cost of doing business in Tangipahoa Parish is a great beneﬁt to the corporate bottomline. “We were a start up business looking for the perfect package – low-cost, fast shipping lanes and a refrigerated building …. TEDF did the impossible. We continue to be a success story.” — Don Schwab, DoRan Sea-Pak Bob Basford, Executive Director Tangipahoa Economic Development Foundation 1514 Martens Drive Hammond, LA 70401 Ofﬁce: 985-549-3170 Cell: 985-215-9736 Fax: 985-549-2127 email: tedf@i-55.com www.tedf.org www.i12alliance.com Port of Prince Rupert/CN say it’s a good thing, because it’s likely that other ports will have to implement similar fees in the near future. Another fee—$30 per TEU for the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland—is also intended to improve air quality and improve congestion. (Note: legislation containing the fee was being held up on California Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk pending passage of a state budget as World Trade went to press). Moreover, a $15 per TEU fee will be implemented on January 1 to help fund infrastructure projects at LA-LB. Again, while shippers have so far been taking the fees in stride, it certainly is harder to do so when fuel costs, both for bunker and diesel, are also on the rise and sales are down. The long-term looks better Fortunately, U.S. exports are helping to save the day, at least for West Coast ports. According to the Paciﬁc Maritime Association, exports jumped 18.5 percent in July compared to July 2007, while containerized exports during the ﬁrst seven months of the year were up 17.4 percent over the same period last year. Not only are containerized exports on the rise, there are plenty of agricultural shipments and project cargo shipments helping to take up the slack. However, exporters are ﬁnding a number of challenges in getting their goods to overseas markets, namely a shortage of equipment in the form of containers and vessel space. The nation’s inland points, which are a major source for commodity exports, are typically far from the consumer products oriented distribution centers, which means exporters in the U.S. interior must sometimes wait weeks to get an empty container. In addition, because shipping lines have cut capacity to the U.S. due to slowing imports, there is naturally less capacity for outbound cargo. And, much of the outbound cargo is going to places other than China, which makes repositioning the containers all the more difﬁcult for shipping lines. Nonetheless, executives who have been around long enough are quick to point out that business is cyclical and furthermore, the long-term forecast calls for trade volumes to return to 7 or 8 percent growth rates in the next few years. The most optimistic of the bunch say that when healthier volumes do come back, the ports will have better infrastructure in place and will be operating in a much more environmentally friendly manner. They also expect that more efﬁcient port operations will more than offset the current round of fees that shippers are being forced to absorb. WT For reprints of this article, please contact Cindy Williams at williamsc@bnpmedia.com or 610-436-4220 ext. 8516. 46 WORLD TRADE OCTOBER 2008 http://www.tedf.org http://www.i12alliance.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Trade - October 2008

World Trade - October 2008 Contents Tune Up Your Supply Chain Globalization: The Real Competitive Threat Supply Chain Watch Tradewinds Shippers and Providers Collaborate to Take on a Challenging Economy Tweaking the Supply Chain to Optimize Value and Minimize Cost Supply Chain Software Morphs Into Enterprise Management Can Warehousing Really, Truly Be Strategic? Everybody is Global Between the Devil and the Deep The Hidden Costs of ‘Free’ Translation Blowing Smoke

World Trade - October 2008

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