Clearing Out Exports

Clearing Out Exports

Clearing Out Exports. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Now that a port deal has been made what about the backlog of shipments. Todd Fryhover with the Washington Apple Commission says they are waiting for the agreement to be signed next month but there is still the issue of moving product.

FRYHOVER: As far as the ports are concerned it appears that Seattle is very close to being back to normal. There’s container availability. There’s the ability to pick the containers up, bring them back loaded and they seem to be going out on the vessels in an efficient manner. The further south you get, there’s a larger backlog. Tacoma maybe is a little bit behind Seattle but once you get into Oakland and Long Beach it’s going to take several weeks before that scenario cleans up and becomes 100% back to normal but we’re getting there.

Fryhover is just back from the US Apple’s March on Capital Hill and there was a lot of discussion on topics like immigration and of course the overall damage of the port issue.

FRYHOVER: There was a number bantered about that was provided to our congressional people and that was $88-million dollars worth of damage to the apple industry alone. It’s hard to really get some concrete numbers when you talk about lost opportunity especially when we focus on Christmas in Mexico, Central and South America and Chinese New Year and Southeast Asia and that missed opportunity. You know how do you put a number on that but $88-million in my opinion is conservative.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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