News & Updates
President’s Message: February 2022
President & CEO
While hundreds of cargo ships have anchored off the West Coast, waiting day and days to have an opportunity to offload their cargo, that is not the case in Florida.
In fact, Florida’s seaports are open for business, and boy is business good, Florida Ports Council Chair and Port Everglades Chief Executive and Port Director Jonathan Daniels shared recently during his State of Seaports speech celebrating Seaports Day at the Florida Capitol.
Thanks to the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, the Florida Legislature and the Florida Department of Transportation, we’ve seen strong investments in our seaports.
“Those investments have provided important infrastructure improvements to help ensure that Florida’s seaports would be ready to receive post-Panamax ships, and it has strengthened our ports to receive and deliver goods to Floridians and the world,” Daniels said.
Most importantly, Florida has become a key player in connecting commerce.
“While the pandemic exposed the ugly underbelly of supply chains, what it also did was shine a light on Florida’s port efficiencies, our no-lines, no-waiting strategy, and our 24/7 operating cycle to help ensure goods get from ship to shelf,” Daniels added.
As many Florida ports experience record-breaking movement of cargo containers, and more shipping lines divert to the Sunshine State to avoid port congestion elsewhere, our resilient seaports are showing the rest of the world how to operate efficiently.
As a result, Governor Ron DeSantis declared February 3rd as Seaports Day in Florida.
“This Seaports Day, I want to thank all of the people working to keep our ports open 24/7 to ensure that goods are getting from ship to shelf efficiently in order to combat our nation’s supply chain crisis,” Governor DeSantis said.
To further attract more shipping lines to call on Florida, the Florida Ports Council along with port directors from many of the Sunshine State’s seaports will travel to Long Beach, California to attend TPM22 – the premier conference for the trans-Pacific and global container shipping and logistics community. Florida port leaders will hold important networking meetings with new lines of business to encourage more cargo traffic.