With a population of over 9 million people and welcoming more than 65 million tourist visitors per year, the Tampa Bay/Orlando I-4 Corridor region is a huge consumer market and home to the largest concentration of distribution centers in Florida, with over 219 DCs totaling over 87 million square feet of space. Now with over 20 million residents, Florida is experiencing one of the nation’s fastest population growth rates having recently overtaken New York as the third-most-populous state, with the Tampa Bay/I-4 Corridor region leading this growth as the fastest growing part of the state.
To help service this and future growth, last summer Port Tampa Bay and terminal operator partner Ports America received and installed two new post-Panamax cranes to complement the existing three gantry cranes and heavy-lift mobile harbor crane already in place.
Together, Port Tampa Bay and Ports America have a multi-phased build-out plan to quadruple the size of the Port of Tampa Container Terminal from its current 40 acres with 2,800 linear feet of berth, to more than 160 acres and berth length of 4000 feet.
This past fall also saw the completion of an additional 17,500 linear feet of rail giving the Port on-dock intermodal access. A dedicated truck ramp leading directly from the port to the interstate also provides a fast, efficient option for delivery to customers. New container services from Mexico offered by Linea Peninsular and TransGulf Shipping have recently joined global and regional container services offered by Zim, MSC, Atlantic RoRo and Seatrade.
Port Tampa Bay remains the largest port in the state of Florida, both in terms of cargo tonnage and geographic area, Port Tampa Bay is also one of the most diverse ports in the United States handling a broad spectrum of imported and exported energy products, construction and building materials, food and beverage, consumer products, automobiles and agricultural products. A major cruise homeport welcoming nearly 1 million passengers/year, Port Tampa Bay is also one of the largest shipbuilding and repair hubs in the Southeast.