Port executives from the Philadelphia area met with South Jersey vegetable growers at Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market on Tuesday in a bid to persuade shipping lines to set up a regular sea import-export service between the Delaware River ports and the port of Veracruz on Mexico’s Atlantic coast.
PennPorts, the port advocacy group, said the four-day service would provide an alternative to established trucking services that last year handled US$3.4bn worth of Mexican fruit, vegetable and electronics imports into the US, according to a report in Philly.com.
Among the supporters of the proposal are South Jersey fruit grower and shipper Fred Sorbello and Juan Ignacio Fernendez-Carbajal, director of the Port of Veracruz, which forms part of a US$5bn expansion campaign by the Mexican government to boost the country’s trade links with the rest of the world.
