John Myers Jr., Staff Reporter
THE PORT Authority of Jamaica (PAJ), in positioning itself to become the major trans-shipment hub in the region, has partnered with Zim Israel Lines to establish a distribution logistics centre at the Port of Kingston.
Minister of Transport and Works, Robert Pickersgill, in his contribution to the 2005/2006 Sectoral Debate in parliament on Tuesday, said the PAJ and Zim, a major shipping line from Israel, have partnered to purchase a sixteen-acre property once owned and used by Cable and Wireless as a maintenance centre.
"Zim will be opening the logistics centre at the Port of Kingston in July," Minister Pickersgill said. Already, he noted that "other major shipping lines have expressed more than ordinary interest in this logistics centre."
Robert Stephens, vice-president of business development at the PAJ, explained that when the logistics centre is established, "we're inviting companies world-wide to locate here to distribute goods, for instance, from China into the Caribbean and into Latin America, as well as North America."
A logistics centre essentially is a central marketing and distribution hub for goods.
"A logistics company brings in full containers, for instance, of television sets and computers, then unpacks, repacks and consolidates the shipment and send it off to Grenada from Jamaica," Mr. Stephens explained at the post-Sectoral Debate press conference held at the Ministry of Transport and Works office in Half-Way Tree, St. Andrew last week.
The establishment of the logistics centre forms part of the Government's five-year expansion plan for the port. The minister noted that the expansion has become necessary in light of the growth being experienced in the industry. As a result, he said there could be further congestion at the port this year as more traffic is expected at the facility.
Over the past year, the port of Kingston handled approximately 14 million metric tonnes of cargo, while the port of Montego Bay managed just over 688,000 metric tonnes.
