128 Business View Magazine - July 2016
“Therefore some of the Port’s infrastructure, while we
maintain it on a daily basis, needs some required at-
tention and sometimes replacement. We just finished
a $26 million project that consisted of the redevelop-
ment and reconstruction of our southernmost slip, Slip
Three. All of the sheet piles that hold the earth from
bleeding into the water were replaced, an additional
three feet of depth was added, and the entire slip was
moved to the north to allow for future development to
the south.
Another item on Almira’s list is a redevelopment of
Berth 17, south of Slip Three. “Berth 17 will be our
southernmost berth at the Port,” he explains. “It’s a
notch that we’re cutting in so that small roll-on/roll-off
vessels can work on that particular berth. We’re also
considering that berth for a possible rail/barge ser-
vice. We have been discussing that plan with railroad
companies and there seems to be a very high level
of interest for that future use. We did it in the past,
so we’re back to the possibility of having a rail/barge
service to Cuba. In 1957, the Port of Palm Beach had
more cargo to and from Cuba than any other port in
the United States. I’d like to duplicate that. It’s a tall
order, but nothing’s impossible and it could develop
into something bigger and better than it was back in
the 1950s.”
Meanwhile, as the efficacy of trade with Cuba is being
determined in the political sphere, the Port’s largest
tenant is a company called Tropical Shipping which of-
fers day-to-day cargo services to and from the Carib-
bean basin. “We also have a major distributor of raw
sugar from Palm Beach County. The raw sugar is trans-
ported through the Port of Palm Beach on barges, then
up to the New York area.”
Almira stresses that the ocean-going traffic up the
east coast of the U.S. helps relieve road traffic conges-
tion, particularly on Interstate 95.“On an annual ba-
sis, we move between 600 and 700 thousand tons of
sugar,” he states. “If that volume of cargo were to be
