The Philadelphia Regional Port Authority’s dedicated cocoa-handling facility at Pier 84 is no stranger to large shipments of cocoa beans from the world’s cocoa-producing nations, with the facility routinely establishing and breaking records based on the size of the shipments it receives. This happened yet again during the first week of January 2012, when the M/V Pacific Tramp arrived at Pier 84 with its load of 19,328 metric tons of cocoa beans (totaling 293,755 bags of cocoa beans), yet another new record for the United States and this facility.

Just like the ebb and flow of the tides on the Delaware River, its ports never remain static. For one, 188 acres of the former Philadelphia Navy Yard in south Philly, located adjacent to the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal (PAMT), were recently deeded to the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PRPA) by the Delaware River Stevedores. PRPA will use this new land to construct, in conjunction with the Commonwealth and private sector investors, a new state-of-the-art container terminal to be called the Southport Marine Terminal.

With 3,993,616 metric tons of cargo handled at the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority’s waterfront facilities in 2011 compared with the 3,628,312 tons of cargo handled in 2010, the Port of Philadelphia marked a solid 10% increase in cargo last year, officials of the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PRPA) reported today. Gains in both containerized cargoes and several non-containerized cargoes contributed to this gain. Combined with the 17% increase in cargo in 2010 over 2009, PRPA has re-established and surpassed pre-recession cargo levels.

>Few sectors in the logistics field have experienced so much growth during this extensive economic downturn than that of third party logistics operators (3PLs). Perhaps that is because this industry has adjusted with the times.