Like traditional factories, container ports also need nearby warehouses. The initial promise of containerisation was to minimise handling on the docks, and this promise has largely been met. Many of the warehouses that have proliferated near the ports (along with others that are located far inland) are used as staging areas where inbound ocean containers are unloaded and the goods processed, sorted, and shipped to their next destinations.
In some ways, import-driven warehouses operate like any other warehouse. Inbound product is received, stored or cross-docked, and then shipped to the next point in the supply chain. The aim of this research study was to discover whether warehouses primarily devoted to the handling of imports exhibit systemic differences from those that are domestically driven.
ProLogis conducted 23 interviews at 10 major North American ports. From these interviews, it became clear that the import warehouse is embedded within the import process and that import warehouse operations cannot be understood except in the context of the overall import process. Accordingly, the MHIA’s key findings apply not just to the import warehouse, but also to the import process, the other participants in the process, and the interrelationships among them.
What they found, in short, is that import-driven warehouses do exhibit systemic differences from their domestically-driven counterparts. Granted, the sample size of the survey is too small for the results to be regarded as definitive. Yet the MHIA would point out that the warehouses it visited specialise in handling imports and that their operators regard their ability to handle container traffic as a core competency and key skill that sets them apart competitively.
