The Port of Wilmington (DE) is situated where the Delaware and Christina Rivers meet, about 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean on the East Coast. It is operated by the state-owned Diamond Port Corp.
The port annually produces $436 million in business revenue; and $409 million in personal income for the state and the region. It’s responsible for 5,900 jobs and generates $41 million in annual taxes.
It handles about 400 vessels annually with an import/export cargo tonnage of more than 6 million tons. The Port of Wilmington is the United States’ leading port for imports of fresh fruit, produce, and juice concentrate, and it is the world’s largest port handling bananas. In fact, it handles more than 200,000 TEUs carrying fresh fruits and concentrates each year.
During the winter, the Port of Wilmington receives table grapes, peaches, plums, applies, nectarines, pears, and other fruits from Chile. In the spring, fresh apples, pears, and kiwifruit arrive from New Zealand and Chile. In the fall, Moroccan clementines arrive.
Wilmington is located at the heart of the East Coast, just minutes from major highways, providing shippers with overnight access to major markets.
Because of its location, the port plays a vital role for produce companies throughout the East Coast, providing quick and easy access to a huge consumer market.
The owners of the port are looking to expand, with plans in motion of redeveloping the Chemours Edgemoor industrial site in Edgemoor, DE as a shipping container site with Gulftainer. The state has granted permits to allow for a 112-foot wide by 2,600-foot long wharf to be built, along with dredging the berth and access channel 45 feet below mean low water, and installing 3,200 feet of bulkhead along the shoreline.
This will allow a facility to hold a capacity for 1.2 million container slots, with upward of 4,000 plus being refrigerated.
Expansion is needed because the port is doing record business and seeing more ships come in than ever before.
Manfredi Cold Storage of which of Kennett Square, PA and Pedricktown, NJ, reports the Port of Wilmington experienced an increase in cargo moving through the past two years.