Holt Logistics seeing success through investments, increased efficiency and innovation

Holt Logistics has seen a significant uptick in business coming through the different facilities on the Delaware River, and a big reason is due to the excellent customer service and operational efficiency it offers its clients.

Eric Holt, chief commercial officer at Holt Logistics, said the Port of Philadelphia is having a good, robust year so far in terms of volumes from seasonal trades.

“Our seasonal trades for the first two quarters this year, which are traditionally Chilean grapes and Moroccan citrus, have been up substantially,” he said.

Some factors behind that increase are due to the current state of world affairs, according to Holt. Parts of Asia are still mired in Covid-related problems that have affected ports and caused some uncertainty in the business climate there, resulting in more volume shifting to a less risky and safer U.S. market.

Additionally, Morocco and South America ship anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of their volumes of their volumes to Russia and the Ukraine, and due to the war much of that is being diverted to other markets, including the United States.

But much of what is destined for the U.S. market is increasingly being received on the ports of the Delaware River, due in large part to the efficiency offered at the terminals, including Packer Ave. Marine Terminal and Gloucester Marine Terminal.

“The West Coast congestion that the trade has seen for the last three years has made the large hubs on the U.S. East Coast susceptible to the same issues,” Holt said. “Even in the best of times, the West Coast is not very efficient, and in fact retailers are diverting away from the West Coast because they are predicting a strike or labor slow down. So, a lot of the volume that would traditionally break over L.A. and Long Beach are starting to affect big U.S. East Coast ports such as Houston, Savannah, Charleston and New York, and as a result large BCOs are now going to Philly.”

This has resulted in an unusual twist, Holt said, as product that is ultimately bound for the U.S. West Coast is being received in the East and trucked to the West, despite the high freight rates.

But growth does not come without investment, and Holt Logistics has been diligent in allocating the necessary resources to keep its facilities at a world class level.

Holt said the company is currently working with the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, better known as PhilaPort, on an expansion projects that will add more capacity.

“With PhilaPort, we are acquiring land outside of the terminal fence proper to support port activities that traditionally don’t have to be on the terminal,” he said. “In Phase 1, we knocked down two buildings that are getting replaced off dock. Now in Phase 3, those buildings are now almost open to help store and cross-dock goods.”

He added that on the intermodal end, the port has capacity, and the CSX and Norfolk Southern railroads are ramping up and planning future growth, which supports the mission of PhilaPort and Holt to get cargo out to the Midwest in an efficient manner.

Another collaboration with PhilaPort has resulted in the recent announcement that the shipping line Wan Hai is starting the first direct Asian line to the Port of Philadelphia.

“This is something Philadelphia has been chasing for 25 years,” said Holt. “With the port environment being what it is up in New York and New Jersey, and down in Savannah and Charleston, Wan Hai made the decision to add the direct line to Philly, which will start in early August, and that is great for the entire Philadelphia community. Likewise, we are seeing our traditional lines like Maersk, Hamburg-Sud and MSC diverting cargo from Montreal, New York, and Norfolk into Philadelphia in a large way.”

Holt said that the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal reached 850,000 TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalents, a standard unit of measure for cargo, last year, and he projects that that number will increase to 950,000 by the end of 2022. As such, the company is preparing to accommodate the nearly 12 percent increase. 

“One way that we can get more yield out of the 150 acres we currently operate on the port is to densify using rubber tire gantry cranes,” said Holt. “Phase 1 of that project was ordered and hopefully will be installed by the end of the year. The plan is to be able to handle 1.2 million TEUs by 2023. We have some additional strategic plans with PhilaPort, and we’re in lockstep with them to be able to take that 1.2 million up to 2 million over a five- to 10-year period.

Holt has other capital investments planned to help it meet the needs of the anticipated increase in volume. For one, it plans to increase the number of fixed refrigerated plugs by around 40 percent.

“For perishables, you need refrigerated plugs at the terminal,” said Holt. “Our population of permanent hardwired plugs is currently 2,400, and we’ve been using power packs, which are like big generators, to get through some of the peaks. But we plan to add another 1,000 permanent ones, to bring that number up to 3,400, while also keeping the power packs for supplemental power when necessary.”

To help offset some of the energy costs, Holt has a solar panel system at the Gloucester Marine Terminal that was commissioned in 2011 and upgraded in 2017-18.

“There are over 31,000 panels that produce close to 11 megawatts of clean energy, which powers about 65 percent of our terminal,” said Christian Holt, who works in sales and marketing for Holt Logistics. “It is one of the largest rooftop solar installations in the United States.”

The solar installation is just one of the ways Holt focuses on sustainability, according to Eric Holt.

“We are always looking for ways to be energy-efficient and sustainable, especially with fuel prices these days,” he said. “Part of Phases 1 and 2 of the container expansion was to electrify the cranes we have, plus buy new electrified cranes. And we’ve shifted our yard equipment. We probably have 2,000 pieces of yard equipment, including forklifts, top picks and reach stackers, and a lot of them are electric and very sustainable. If you look at our top four customers, which are Del Monte, Fyffes, Walmart and Dole, sustainability is very important to them, and we each have our own sustainability goals and we market them together.”

Christian Holt said the investments that were made over the last 10 years have made PhilaPort a kind of niche port to handle refrigerated and frozen products, from the high number of refrigerated plugs to the on-dock inspection station at the Packer Ave. Marine Terminal.

“That’s a big advantage, because the fruit comes right off the ship and stripped directly into inspection station instead of having to go off port,” he said. “It expedites the process and keeps the cold chain intact; the product is delivered to market faster.”

“With the inspection station, our goal is to have product available for pick-up within two business days, and we hit our targets for the last year-and-a-half based on the new inspection station we built,” said Eric Holt.

Another advantage Holt can offer are expanded hours at the Packer Ave. terminal, so customers have more flexibility in pick-up times.

“We started offering night gates, weekend gates and holiday gates during the pandemic, and if there is demand, we’d be happy to continue offering flexible gate hours,” said Christian Holt. “That’s something unique, and at our own cost. We wanted to keep the container yard flowing as much as possible. It also helps our operation because we only have a certain amount of space on the terminal, so any out-gate container, opens space for new product coming in. With the growth in 2021, we had space constraints, in order to grow, we needed to get the containers off the port and into the market as soon as possible.”

Labor is another challenge Holt Logistics is confronting head-on.

“Companywide, we have around 3,000 full-time union equivalents over the five different labor unions we deal with, which is up from 2,200 pre-pandemic levels,” said Eric Holt. “This demonstrates the demand for Philly and the labor pool has been added to support that growth.”

“We have to credit our labor force, from management to supervision to unions, government agencies,  everyone is working together to keep product moving and the customers happy in Philadelphia,” added Christian Holt. “We’ve had efforts to increase our job opportunities for people, and we have been hosting recruiting events monthly in Gloucester, NJ, and also reaching out to colleges and attending local job fairs. This is something we’ve never done, in the past we had people lining up for work, but when the pandemic hit our labor force decreased. We could rarely fill our hire for the day, but now we are seeing those numbers grow and we’re lucky enough to have a hardworking labor pool that continues to grow.”

Finally, Eric Holt said that Holt Logistics is excited about a new distribution center that is scheduled to open soon in South Philadelphia less than a mile from the Packer Ave. Marine Terminal.

“It is called the PhilaPort Distribution Center, and it is 200,000 square feet of dry food grade products and it was scheduled to open at the end of June,” he said. “This is a big opportunity for us because it is a Class A building a mile from the terminal, and there is the ability to build another 200,000-square-foot building right next to it, which will probably be refrigerated and frozen. That one is expected to be completed in 24 months or so, and between the two it will really facilitate growth.