Port of Brownsville Celebrates Banner Year

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Port of Brownsville Celebrates Banner Year

Port of Brownsville CEO Eduardo Campirano
Port of Brownsville CEO Eduardo Campirano

About 250 people attended the Port of Brownsville’s annual State of the Port event to celebrate continued growth and look forward to opportunities that may be just around the corner. “2017 was indeed a banner year,” said Brownsville Navigation District Vice Chairman John Reed. “And 2018 could become a turning point for the port and for South Texas.”

Reed was the lead speaker at the Thursday luncheon in Brownsville. He took the place of BND Chairman John Wood, who was ill. Reed was joined at the podium by port commissioners Ralph Cowen, Sergio Tito Lopez and Carlos Masso.

Among the 2017 highlights touted by Reed were port revenues of almost $24 million, the highest in port history. He also noted that the Foreign Trade Zone at the port ranks second in the nation in exports. Numbers for 2016 were not released until late last year. They show that $2.8 billion in exports were shipped through the trade zone.

Brownsville Navigation District Vice Chairman John Reed
Brownsville Navigation District Vice Chairman John Reed

The port also increased the number of vessels from 1,091 in 2016 to 1,317 in 2017. “More vessels means more cargo and that means more jobs,” Reed said.

At the end of 2017, the navigation district signed final paperwork with Union Pacific Railroad that culminated a 44-year project to relocate outdated railroad switchyards from downtown Brownsville to areas closer to the port. Now rail customers of the port and Union Pacific partner with the Rio Grande International Railway to move tens of thousands of rail cars each year throughout the United States and into Mexico.

Several opportunities in the pipeline for 2018 were also discussed. A story in the April edition of Valley Business Report will look at these and other Cameron County developments with the potential to spur significant economic growth for the region.

George Cox is a veteran journalist with more than 30 years experience as a newspaper writer and editor. A Corpus Christi native, he started his career as a reporter for The Brownsville Herald after graduating from Sam Houston State University with a degree in journalism. He later worked on newspapers in Laredo and Corpus Christi as well as northern California. George returned to the Valley in 1996 as editor of The Brownsville Herald and in 2001 moved to Harlingen as editor of the Valley Morning Star. He also held the position of editor and general manager for the Coastal Current, a weekly entertainment magazine with Valleywide distribution. George retired from full-time journalism in 2015 to work as a freelance writer and legal document editor. He continues to live in Harlingen where he and his wife Katherine co-founded Rio Grande Valley Therapy Pets, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising public awareness of the benefits of therapy pets and assisting people and their pets to become registered therapy pet teams.

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