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Executive insights
Leaders from Virginia’s maritime sector share their thoughts about building a workforce pipeline in Virginia, the growth of offshore wind and how climate change impacts the industry. JUDY BARRETT Virginia Maritime Association board president; TowneBank private banking officer; Norfolk VB: As president of VMA’s board, what’s your main priority this year? Barrett: My main priority […][...]
Westward ho!
Southwest Virginia’s leaders feel confident their region will be home to the state’s next inland port. “The planets are aligning for us right now,” says state Sen. Todd Pillion, R-Washington County. “Our localities are excited about it. The state seems to be excited about it.” During the Virginia General Asse[...]
Port of entry
By all accounts, the Port of Virginia and the overseas shipping industry as a whole are major economic drivers in the commonwealth, with an upward trajectory expected to continue. For fiscal year 2022, the port’s TEU (20-foot equivalent unit) container volume hit a record 3.7 million units, a 14.7% increase from 2021, whic[...]
Miles to go
Virginia’s largest-ever highway construction project, the $3.9 billion Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel (HRBT) expansion, continues to dominate the state’s ongoing roadwork projects. Construction began in October 2020. The contractor — Hampton Roads Connector Partners, a joint venture led by Dragados USA Inc. that inclu[...]
Building a ‘floatel’
Construction is set to begin late this year on a service operations vessel (SOV) that will transport technicians and equipment to support the massive wind turbines that Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy S.A. is installing for Dominion Energy Inc.’s $9.8 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project off the Virginia Beach coast. Crowley Corp., a Jacksonville, […]
Setting a course
Each week, MDV SpartanNash LLC, the nation’s leading supplier for overseas U.S. military commissaries and exchanges, loads 100 to 200 containers filled with everything from peanut butter to clothing aboard steamships bound for Europe, Africa, Bahrain, Kuwait and Honduras, as well as Puerto Rico and Guantanamo Bay. “In pl[...]
Turning on a dime
Though many American consumers may not think about it much, trucks move just about everything they buy, use, eat, drink and wear. The U.S. trucking industry hauled 72.5% of all freight transported nationwide in 2019, according to the Arlington-based American Trucking Associations. Why should anybody care? Because the ranks of tr[...]
Port of Virginia
In fiscal 2021, the Port of Virginia set cargo records, generating more than $100.1 billion in ancillary economic impact, according to a report from William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business in conjunction with Glen Allen-based Mangum Economics. The six-terminal system generated 436,667 jobs, $47.4 billion in Virginia gross state product, $27.2 billion […]
Forward motion
Shenandoah is known for apple blossoms, but something else is popping up this spring in Front Royal: a new 340,000-square-foot warehouse logistics center. About a half-mile from the Virginia Inland Port, the center is one of roughly a dozen projects in the region built by Equus Capital Partners Ltd., a commercial real estate age[...]
Next stop — civilian life
“About every 15 minutes,” Shawn Avery’s phone at the Hampton Roads Workforce Council rings with an employer calling to find skilled workers to fill vacancies, he says. Avery is president and CEO of the council, which oversees federally funded workforce development programs and links employers and workers. In the pr[...]
Solid prospects
Detlev Peters has walked into convenience stores in the Hampton Roads area a couple of times recently to find the candy aisle shockingly empty. “Hershey’s, Reese’s, M&M’s, everything, like they would just have a clean shelf of just nothing,” marvels Peters, who graduated with a degree in maritime and su[...]
Commentary: Adjusting to a new shipping reality
Ocean shipping patterns established during the first year of the pandemic have taken root, and it’s time for shippers to adjust strategies for the long term. That was the takeaway from the first in-person Trans-Pacific Maritime (TPM) Conference in three years, presented in Long Beach, California, in March by IHS Markit Ltd[...]
