Barbara Melvin Addresses Crowd At Chamber’s Outlook Luncheon

While many US ports struggled with supply chain problems during the COVID-19 pandemic South Carolina ports — specifically the Port of Charleston — seized the opportunity to improve.

The Port of Charleston jumped from the ninth to the eighth largest port in the country and knocked the Port of Oakland down one in doing so, said Barbara Melvin, president and CEO of the South Carolina Ports Authority.

Eighty percent of the nation’s imports come in through the nation’s top 10 ports.

Melvin was the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce’s Outlook Luncheon keynote speaker Wednesday, March 22nd as 500 area business and community leaders attended the event.

“During the pandemic it was pretty obvious to everybody that things weren’t working well in the supply chain,” Melvin said. “We take great care making sure that we remained productive and while other ports struggled close to two years to get rid of the congestion we did it in five months and we did it because we partnered with everyone up and down the supply chain, selflessly, to make sure you got the goods you needed.”

“We all heard about the West Coast ports and we all saw that picture that looked like the Normandy invasion off the West Coast while there were more than 100 ships off shore waiting to be worked,” she said.

Many shippers transited the Panama Canal to the Gulf Coast and East Coast ports to avoid that congestion.

“Charleston grew the third fastest (of U.S. ports) during the last 10 years,” Melvin said. Only Houston and Savannah grew more.

“Our goal is to grow two times the national port market growth rate. We feel the Southeast affords us the opportunity.”

The pandemic fueled some of that growth.

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