One thing we aren’t hearing about is project cargo and heavy shipments in the current market. With container issues and traffic bottlenecked on the west coast, our east coast ports are becoming a booming section of the nation to handle incoming cargo. Nowhere is that more evident than in shipments of granite coming from India, hitting the port of Norfolk. While there are standard delays with equipment and fallout from the Ever Given fiasco, the demand for granite has never been higher.
With people staying home the past year, home improvements are on the rise, and in the US granite countertops are a hot ticket. That granite isn’t easy to place in a home, but it’s even harder to carry by containers and trucks. In fact, specialized, steel-reinforced containers are required and can carry up to 29 tons. Since there are fewer of these reinforced boxes than normal containers, the equipment scarcity can hit them particularly hard. Apart from specialized equipment, the infrastructure investment the Port of Norfolk made into their operations has outfitted the cranes with stronger lifts to manage heavy cargo safely and securely from the ships docked.
Nelson International has been cheering on our local port for years, watching as they grew and built a service-based model that’s light years ahead of most local small ports. Investing early gave our area a step up on the competition, especially when the more well-known ports of NY, NY, LA, LB, and SEA are struggling to keep up with the influx of containers to the point ships are waiting in the San Pedro Bay for over a week just to find berth space. We didn’t know just how critical our location would be post-pandemic.
Your Nelson representative has a plethora of solutions ready to suit your supply chain, whether you’re handling light retail cargo, e-commerce shipments or 29 ton boxes of granite for homes across the state. Reach out and see how we can improve your logistics plan this quarter.
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