The future for Philadelphia’s Port is with Lithuania.
You heard me.
The city’s port just got hooked up to many new, potential customers in Europe and Asia, when the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority signed an agreement Friday with the Republic of Lithuania’s Port of Klaipeda.
Eligijus Masiulis, who is the Baltic state’s Transport and Communications minister, met with officials here to agree on expanded trade between Philadelphia and Klaipeda, according to a press release from Holt Logistics Corp., which was involved in the agreement.
And we care because …?
Small though Lithuania may be, main shipping lines to ports in Western Europe and Southeast Asia all pass through Klaipeda.
Lithuania’s third-largest city turns out to be the northernmost ice-free port on the Baltic Sea’s eastern coast. So even though it’s a short route to northern resources, it never freezes up, and con operate all year round.
As a result, it links to sea, land and railway routes that reach as far away as China. Klaipeda also now has an annual cargo handling capacity of 45 million tons.
The Port of Philadelphia, which already saw the size of its cargo increase in 2010 and 2011, could have even better years coming up.
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