20 American Journal of Transportation American Journal of Transportation ajot.com The Port of Baltimore Propeller Club recently honored Rob Herb as Person of the Year at the Sparrows Point CC. Rob is a 1978 graduate of Mount St. Marys University and is President of the Baltimore Chapter of their alumni association. In 1997, he became President of Terminal Shipping Services, a leading ship agency firm in the Mid-Atlantic. Terminal Shipping and John S. Connor Global Logistics merged in 2020. Rob remains active with them as well as being President of the Seaman’s Church in Baltimore and Trea- surer of the Maritime Exchange. (L to R) Patrick Connor, Lee Connor, Claire Herb, Rob Herb, Butch Connor, Alex Giles Esq. Baltimore Propeller Club honors Herb as Person of the Year Port of Baltimore: Novel grain transloading facility a win-win Ports America Chesapeake and Frey partner on a novel grain transloading facility in the Port of Bal- timore — a win-win for the supply chain. By George Lauriat, AJOT (NOVEL – continued on page 24) In the Port of Baltimore, Ports America Chesapeake (PAC) is largely known for running the port’s Seagirt Marine Terminal (SMT). After all, the PAC facility, on property leased from the Mary- land Port Administration (MPA), accounts for a vast majority of the containers moving through the Port of Baltimore. And recently there has been a lot to talk about with the opening of double stack move- ments from the SMT through the Howard Tunnel following the tun- nel’s enlargement and track work. Add in the improvements and new equipment being deployed at Sea- girt and the attention to the termi- nal is understandable. Nonetheless, a very differ- ent (PAC) project — an agri- cultural export facility located adjacent to the Seagirt con- tainer terminal — may become a model for other ports to try to emulate in the near future. An Idea Takes Shape April 9th was the shovel-in- the-dirt groundbreaking for the building of a grain export trans- loading facility at the site adja- cent to Seagirt Marine Terminal. The decision to build the facility came to fruition through a partnership between Frey, an agricultural commodities trader and logistics company that han- dles over 1.3 million metric tons of grain per-year and Ports America Chesapeake (PAC) which is funding the project on land leased from the Maryland Port Administration (MPA). Frey in turn will operate the facility exclusively for a mini- mum of six years. As Mark Schmidt, PAC’s CEO, explained, “Grain has always been a big part of the ship- ping business…in some capacity, and normally, it’s been a great bulk commodity.” But there was a niche demand for containerized grain movements. However, the containerized movement of grain is fairly unique…and more costly. But containers also allow “more flexibility within the market.” And as Schmidt explained the idea grew from the expe- rience “years ago from an import demand for transload- ing organic soybeans. Because of limited supplies of organic grains in the US, the manufac- turers of the organic breads, and chicken feed for organic chickens drove the need to have imports of organic grains to supply those needs.” And there are some very big grain shippers in Maryland such as Mount Airy, Land O’ Lakes and ADM. However, the con- tainerized movement of grain is fairly unique…and more costly. But containers also allow “more flexibility within the market.” But Schmidt had a novel idea about moving Maryland’s grain exports via container to markets overseas. “We’ve always looked for a route to supplement that with exports to help the export grain shippers in a way that would be efficient for the local market primarily. And about seven years ago, … Mike Adamchak [Frey’s Chief Commercial Officer] and I… started talking…and eventually, we worked on a proposal to start this process.” And the key to the plan was “capturing the needs of the farmer” moving the grains [soybeans being the “driver” crop] “to sell overseas” shipped via container out of Seagirt Marine Terminal. As Schmidt outlined, the mechanics of the move were fairly straight forward, “The farm trucks come to our site rather
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