JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Sending Jacksonville products to the Caribbean.
Jaxport entered into a 20 agreement with Puerto Rico to keep the territory as the River City's biggest trading partner.
Chief Commercial Officer Robert Peek says Puerto Rico is the bread and butter of Jacksonville trading, and having locked in will open the port up to explore other international relationships.
Most of the relationship with Puerto Rico is exporting - big stuff - cars, boats, even bulldozers will take off from the port.
Jaxport will send ships full of cargo like that, with containers full of things from Rooms To Go and Home Depot too, twice a week until 2040.
Jacksonville is also Puerto Rico's biggest shipping trade partner, and the port authority director says the benefits go beyond economic, that having the tie with the port here will help the next time a hurricane threatens.
He's hoping, in the next 20 years, the relationship will help Puerto Rico become a Caribbean leader in exports.
"We receive the vessels filled up, but sometimes don't leave the port filled up," said Puerto Rico Port Authority Director Joel Pizza. "We want to incentivize sending cargo to the United States."
Now that Puerto Rico is locked in for beyond the foreseeable future, Jaxport is working to bring in other trade partners to help stock the shelves at the grocery stores.
They've had a demand to make the port bigger, so they've done just that, digging the canal down to 47 feet.
With the new dimensions, they're talking to shipping companies in Asia, Western Europe and Northern Europe.
"If you asked someone 20 years ago to anticipate how large ships would be today, nobody in the industry would've known they'd get this large, so these investments are terrifically important for a community like Jacksonville for us to be able to handle the business that wants to come here," said Jaxport Chief Commercial Officer Robert Peek.
However, Jaxport has not quite maximized its space - the new ships the channel can fit are so big, the power lines are in the way.
The Jaxport board of directors agreed to enter into a deal with JEA to raise those power lines to 197 feet, so they'll be able to handle any ship that wants to come this way.
Jaxport says the harbor expansion project is connected to 15,000 jobs.