The Future of Baltimore Port

Happy Thanksgiving! With the holiday season fast approaching, the supply chain is now feeling the brunt of increased consumer demand. With this increased demand, however, our industry continues to grow. Stay safe this holiday season!

Photo from Baltimore Sun

Jose and Logistics

Our home port of Baltimore is modernizing, gearing up for the needs of the modern-day.

For years, it has been somewhat overshadowed by some of its more visible competitors along the East Coast – New York, Savannah, Charleston – despite it being the 11th busiest in the nation.

Now, port officials say with the vast jump in imported cargo and tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements underway or on the drawing board, the sprawling facility on the Chesapeake Bay will see rapid growth over the next several years.

The new cranes and deeper berth from recent dredging projects can accommodate the largest ships that can transit the recently widened Panama Canal, the so-called Neo-Panamax ships. These improvements mean the Port of Baltimore is ready in the short term to alleviate the effects of COVID’s widespread disruption of the entire intermodal supply chain. They also mean that Baltimore is ready to substantially grow its share of containership calls on a long-term basis.

Baltimore has existing strong port infrastructure, including large cargo crane capacity, and local warehouse, distribution, and sorting facilities. There is less congestion here, compared to New York and New Jersey, and Baltimore is closest to the Midwest as compared to Norfolk, Savannah or Miami. These traits make it an ideal place for ships to call to avoid the bottlenecks faced at other ports on the East and West coasts. As a result, Baltimore is uniquely positioned among other ports to accommodate growth in cargo capacity in the near term which will ease pressure and delays in the intermodal supply chain.

Happenings in Tomorrowmade

Recently, our team attended the Plastic Industry Expo and SouthTech in Ohio and South Carolina respectively, to showcase the work we have been doing to streamline and modernize our industry.

In these two conferences, we were able to show off our different services and cultivate new personal and business relationships thus allowing us to gain a new set of contacts.

Jon Withrow, our VP of Customer Relations recounted that, because we (Tomorrowmade) normally work remotely, “it was very exciting that he got to attend these conferences and create relationships in an industry that isn’t traditionally face-to-face.”

Jimmy Glombowski, our VP of Vendor Relations echoed a similar sentiment. “The face-to-face interaction was a breath of fresh air. It was a chance to step away from the phones and to network with our potential customers in the industry. Jimmy found that it was particularly rewarding following up after the conference to truly cultivate the relationships he made.

Jon and Jimmy both told me that this was a great opportunity to learn about the needs of our customers. We realized that a lot of our customers wanted more port work (the ability to pick up loads straight from the port) – this is something we haven’t previously done. Because of this, we are now actively looking to service these needs.

Reiterating what I wrote above, we are still a very young company: we have much to learn and do. Yet, we remain determined to continue to disrupt the industry and continue to adapt to the needs of our customers.

Plenty is in the pipeline. Stay tuned.