The Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans and the St. Louis Regional Freightway entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to exchange market and operational information with the goal of growing trade and building upon existing and new business relationships between the two regions and critical ports. The agreement also calls for joint marketing efforts to meet those objectives.
The MOU, signed Feb. 23, is the culmination of discussions begun during a September 2016 visit to St. Louis by top officials for the Port of New Orleans. At that time, it became evident that it would be mutually beneficial to foster even greater collaboration and to leverage the intermodal connectivity between Port NOLA and the St. Louis region.
“The Port of New Orleans historically has strong ties to business and industry via the St. Louis corridor,” said Brandy D. Christian, President and CEO of the Port of New Orleans. “Located in the Lower Mississippi River system and served by all six Class I railroads and the interstate highway system, Port NOLA is the most intermodal port in the nation. Today’s agreement solidifies our efforts to work with our inland neighbors to develop new opportunities and optimize our connectivity.”
Christian and representatives of the St. Louis Regional Freightway, an enterprise of Bi-State Development (BSD), signed the MOU. Signing the agreement were BSD President and Chief Executive Officer John M. Nations, St. Louis Regional Freightway Executive Director Mary C. Lamie and representatives from each of the three regional ports—St. Louis Development Corporation, America’s Central Port and Kaskaskia Regional Port District. They traveled to New Orleans as part of an 11-member delegation from Illinois and Missouri.
“This agreement, and the collaborative partnership it is founded on, will go a long way toward helping coordinate the Port of New Orleans’ supply chain with our supply chain and enhancing the St. Louis region’s ability to move freight up and down the Mississippi River for the entire nation,” said Lamie. “We now have a framework to work more closely together to generate new business activity that will help accelerate the present level of economic growth by increasing revenues to the Port of New Orleans and optimizing the St. Louis region’s freight network.”
Among the opportunities the St. Louis Regional Freightway hopes to swiftly capitalize on are Port NOLA’s new container-on-barge services operated by SEACOR AMH. The bi-state area freight group visited the SEACOR AMH Terminal in Baton Rouge to tour container-on-barge loading and to learn more about operations, which include terminal services in the St. Louis area.
