By Joshua Burd
Two decades’ worth of infrastructure upgrades are paying dividends for New Jersey’s booming port region, supporting a surge in cargo volume that is poised to sustain the growth in the state’s industrial market.
That’s according to a recent report by Transwestern, which highlighted the steady uptick in recent years at the Port of New York and New Jersey and the resulting demand for warehouse and logistics space. Those trends have coincided with the growth of the two largest West Coast ports in Southern California and a similar pattern of investing in infrastructure, the study found, as port authorities on both coasts have been planning for the arrival of larger container ships.
“Two massive port complexes, a nation apart, are on surprisingly similar tracks to increase their share of the global trade in containerized goods,” Transwestern wrote. “Sharing a belief that the widened Panama Canal would convince more shippers to route their products from Asia directly to the East Coast, U.S. port authorities on both coasts have devoted the better part of two decades to deepening channels, raising bridges for greater clear heights, investing in greater terminal automation and shoring up dockside infrastructure to handle ever-larger ships.”
In 2016, container volume at the Port of New York and New Jersey reached 6.25 million 20-foot-equivalent units, or TEUs. That figure represents almost 13 percent of the total U.S. volume last year and has grown from 5.53 million TEUs in 2012.
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