America’s seaports play a vital role in transporting fresh fruits and vegetables to and from the U.S. Major ports continue to build their import and export volume while launching projects to improve their infrastructure and enhance their operations.
Here’s a look at what’s going on at some of those facilities.
Hueneme
The Port of Hueneme, located between Los Angeles and San Francisco, is known as “The Port that Farmers Built,” said Garrett Raborg, marketing and communications specialist.
The port provides California’s central coast agricultural industry with an ocean link to the global market, he said.
“The Port of Hueneme is the West Coast leader for banana imports with over 600,000 tons on over 156 vessels annually,” Raborg said.
“Port customers import more than 30 million boxes of bananas annually equaling 5 billion bananas, with market value of $885 million,” he added.
The port ranked second nationally for banana imports by tonnage and third by value.
Fresh fruit import trade volumes grew 3% at the port during 2023.
“This is an essential commodity sector for the port, and it is growing due to persistent demand for produce as well as dry container cargo,” Raborg said.
Revenues for agriculture products in 2023 reached $9.4 million.
The port also receives fresh produce such as bananas, pineapples, blueberries, avocados and more from Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Costa Rica and Ecuador. The facility handles break bulk and containerized fresh produce through refrigerated ocean carriers.
Apples, pears and potatoes are the greatest exports from Hueneme, Raborg said.
“The port processes containerized chilled and frozen cargoes through dedicated on-dock yards, including 93,000 square feet of on-dock refrigerated transit building space,” he said.
Additional space is available nearby at a more than 1 million-square-foot temperature-controlled facility offering transload operations for Chiquita, Del Monte, Anacapa Fresh, Channel Islands Cold Storage, Mission Produce, Seabord, Del Norte Distribution and Lineage Logistics.
Oakland
The Port of Oakland serves as a premier gateway for U.S. food products, including fruit, nuts and vegetables exported to markets in Asia and throughout the world, said David DeWitt, media and public relations specialist for the port.
During 2023, the port exported 114,990 20-foot containers of edible fruit, nuts and similar items valued at more than $5 billion, he said. A 25-acre Cool Port Oakland cold storage and logistics facility, which opened November 2018, serves as a hub for temperature-controlled cargo transitioning through Northern California.
DeWitt cited three current projects that have been funded to further enhance the port:
- The Arterial Roadway Improvements Project intended to reduce congestion, improve safety and increase access across critical arterial routes serving the port.
- The Terminal Modernization Project designed to accommodate ultra-large container vessels capable of handling up to 24,000 shipping containers at all its deep-water berths.
- The Port of Oakland Outer Harbor Terminal Redevelopment Project intended to sustain the port’s future growth potential and operational efficiencies, support rural farming communities, and maintain and expand the global competitiveness of the port.
Los Angeles
The Port of Los Angeles handled 383,000 metric tons of fruit and vegetables in 2022 — 175,000 metric tons in imports and 108,000 in exports — said Marcel Van Dijk, cargo marketing manager.
The majority of the imports are citrus, berries, bananas, melons and asparagus, he said. Export commodities are citrus, grapes, carrots and onions.
Perishables arrive from Central America, Chile, Southeast Asia and the Philippines. Export destinations are Japan, Korea, China, Central and South America.
The Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach has six major cold storage facilities with 116,500 pallet positions 3 miles to 8 miles from the port to handle perishable cargo.
There are many more cold storage facilities in the Los Angeles area, and perishable cargo is also stored in facilities in the Central Valley, Dijk said.
The Port of Los Angeles has a dedicated fruit terminal for palletized cargo from reefer vessels.
The stevedore, Stevedoring Services of America, is in the process of changing over liquefied natural gas forklifts to 100% electric forklifts, he said. This should create a fully sustainable terminal, without any internal combustion engines in any of the yard equipment, by 2025.
Northwest
The Northwest Seaport Alliance, which includes the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., is the largest gateway port complex in the U.S. for containerized seaborne exports of apples, said Steve Balaski, business development director for the alliance.
“Agriculture in general is a major part of the volume that goes through our terminals,” he said.
Washington is a major producer of apples, blueberries, cherries and grapes, he said. One-third of the state’s apples are exported via ship to places like India and Asia.
The alliance recently received a Port Infrastructure Development Program grant of more than $50 million to help expand a Tacoma terminal and add capacity to handle refrigerated containers.
“We support the development of temperature-controlled cold-storage facilities,” Balaski said. “We’re seeing a very strong demand for cold-storage capacity.”
The ports play an important role in agriculture transportation, he said.
“The ocean transportation industry with refrigeration and ports is what allows our Washington state producers to reach global markets,” Balaski said. “Exports are really where the growth is.”
