GLOUCESTER CITY, NJ — Holt Logistics Corp. has for many decades been a cornerstone in the seaports of the Delaware River.

The company owns the Gloucester Marine Terminal in Gloucester, NJ. Holt is developing — and already utilizing a new port facility downstream in nearby Paulsboro, NJ.In the offices of Holt Logistics are Holt family members Leo, Eric, Tom III, Tom Jr. and Phillip. Eric, Tom Holt III and Phillip Holt are fourth-generation members of Holt Logistics.

The company is also the lessor of the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal (PAMT), which is owned by PhilaPort, part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Leo Holt, president of Holt Logistics, noted that he and his brothers “Believe in what we learned from our dad. This is that the fruit will tell you what it needs and if you do what is best for the fruit, you’ll get more cargo. And that has been very much — looking backwards — an important part of the success we’ve managed to create here.”

Reviewing the various interests of the Holt family in this seaport, Holt noted that PAMT is in the later phases of a $190 million investment by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Holt Logistics itself is investing $65 million in enormous cranes for the Packer Terminal.

This rapidly-expanding ocean container terminal located in south Philadelphia, “has seen some wonderful, if you will, trees sprout up where there were saplings before.”

There are four new super post-Panamax cranes with another one on the way, Holt said. These add service beyond two post-Panamax cranes. Now, the Packer Avenue Terminal is “starting to look like what it wants to be when it grows up. Which is a facility capable of handling a couple million TEUs of container traffic.”

Underpinning PAMT service are “robust refrigerated facilities; 2,400 refrigerated plug-in points and a team of people, which is more important than any of the things I’ve said before, that drive very high levels of quality, safety and productivity.”

For the perishable industry, “probably one of the niftiest things in 2019 would be the inauguration of a brand-new state of the art, Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Patrol, ag inspection station. They will share that geography with our partners at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and therefore we will have a streamlined, high velocity, high capacity ag inspection station that will make it a pleasure for the inspectors to work in, who are human beings and need a good place to work.”

Of course, the facility is also very good “for the fruit to transit.”

With this facility come ocean cargo services from South America’s east and west coasts, in addition to Australia and New Zealand.

These services to Packer Avenue “are being joined by some new entrants in 2019.

A new South African service
June 10 saw the inaugural call of a joint Maersk and MSC service from South Africa. “There is a large quantity of product that goes to Canada and the United States that has arrived traditionally in containers. So that stands now as a second pillar to the traditional Western Cape break bulk service, which goes to Gloucester.”

This joint service between MSC — the Mediterranean Shipping Co. — and Maersk involves Maersk’s a brand in Africa which is SAF Marine. This containerized service calling on PAMT serves “a robust marketplace where anything like agricultural machinery going that way including food products, manufactured goods,” including auto parts.

“We want this to be a year-round service. It is promised through the citrus season. We believe there is enough product to sustain it” throughout the year.

“We are applying ourselves in normal fashion to make sure that the cargo is handled promptly, properly, and expeditiously through the terminal.”

Holt noted, “The upshot of 20 years of work in South Africa is that the supply chain is catching up with the to the pioneering efforts of the fruit exporters.”

Looking into the Mediterranean
“When you have a service from Morocco you also have the opportunity to have discussions with carriers like MSC or Maersk Line about the Mediterranean in general and the Med is an area that sends a lot of products.” These include consumer goods and abundant “food products, many of which are perishable and native to our work style. But many which are not as perishable, but they certainly are viewed as food products, like olive oil and wine and other conserved goods like olives. And so we believe as these pipelines grow and mature they will afford those shippers the opportunity to come to a place like ours which has a high level of customer service, which is not as easy to sustain when you have a very, very high volume of containers like they do in other places on the East Coast.”

In the Mediterranean Basin are “fresh produce opportunities that are available to create the cream for the pie from Israel, Turkey, Greece, Italy for certain. Israel has a very robust market export market it’s not just Jaffa’s.”

Holt added that some importers, such as Jac. Vandenburg Inc., Yonkers, NY, already have a strong import trade with Israel. To grow even more, “I think what that area is waiting for a dependable reefer cold chain.” Israeli vegetable exporters can exceed the famous Jaffa orange volume. A cost-effective cargo service would make Israel more competitive with Latin American exports to the U.S. “I think in particular there’s a lot support for Israeli products in this country.” The transit time from Israel would be 15 to 18 days.

New cold warehouse in Philadelphia
Holt said “what we hope to do with our partners in Pennsylvania is to take those successes already in place at Packer and make them the base case for even more investment and that investment will be continuing to drive the second phase a major warehouse development in the Philadelphia area near the terminal.”

This site was the location of the old Philadelphia produce market, which was replaced in 2011. The old facility has since been flattened and 30 acres are “a distribution warehouse and inspection station and overall a food product handling campus.” Holt said this will continue to cement a large cadre of other people throughout the Delaware Valley as it relates for food handling and why we’re are one of the preferred ports for many exporters as well as shipping lines for that category.

The new construction will be the latest of many refrigerated warehouse construction projects that are underway in the Delaware Valley.

Is there too much cold warehousing coming online?
Holt responded: “I think if you up took a conversation with someone in commercial real estate, in this region there is a shortage of both dry and refrigerated capacity. And you are already past the intersection where there is a good economic case made for the construction of more or the conversion of more. Our particular niche is tied into the port.”

PAMT distribution center
The new distribution center being built within the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal “fits hand and glove with the U.S. trucking situation. Specifically, this meets “an increasing importance to integrate the delivery process,” Holt said. There is great pressure to minimize trucker time in the terminal and minimize delivery times from the port to distant distribution warehouses.

Paulsboro Marine Terminal
Holt Logistics is not only cooperating with Pennsylvania but New Jersey in developing new seaport infrastructure.

Working with the administration of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a new port in Paulsboro is now working with dry cargo. Russian steel was being discharged as The Produce News met with Holt in June.

What Paulsboro “wants to be when it grows up is yet to be seen. But it is fully equipped to be very much like our other operations. It is a very flexible and product focused facility. Driving piles for the northern Paulsboro berth was to resume in July following an environmental moratorium to protect the short nose sturgeon.

Solar Power — Gloucester Marine terminal
At the Gloucester Marine Terminal earlier this year, Holt completed the second phase of its rooftop solar project. “We put another 1.5 megawatts of power production onto another set of rooftop panels, so we continue to be the largest rooftop solar installation in the U.S., producing a significant percentage of our power.