Jones Lang LaSalle partners with Florida Inland Port in logistics partnership with Port of Miami

In an effort to improve the flow of goods movement throughout Florida and the Southeastern United States, global real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) said its client, Florida Inland Port, and the Port of Miami have inked a Letter of Intent (LOI).

The Port of Miami is the largest seaport in Florida, and the Florida Inland Port is the first rail-oriented, integrated logistics center in the state and is 90 miles from the Port of Miami in southwest St. Lucie County.

According to JLL officials, the terms of the LOI state that both parties will “undertake an alliance of cooperation that will include sharing data and technological capabilities, as well as coordinating joint marketing and public affairs activities.” They added that this relationship is expected to benefit the seaport and logistics center and Florida’s economy, explaining that the capacity for state-of-the-art multi-modal logistics will provide a competitive advantage that will increase goods flow into and out of Florida, as well as spur job growth.

John Carver, head of JLL’s Ports, Airports and Global Infrastructure teams, told LM in an interview that this LOI will allow shippers to contract their cargo to be shipped from its point of origin to a warehouse destination in a single package, combined with the carrier and terminal operations and rail component.

“This will eliminate the need for shippers to contract separately, or have a logistics services company contract separately for the ocean component and off-loading component at the ports and transportation to the end destination,” said Carver. “A lot of these carrier lines have commitments with the rail providers in these markets and can provide a single source solution for shippers to be able to have cargo moved directly to the Florida Inland Port location, which is an efficient way of transporting their cargo.”

And he added that this alliance allows for the collaboration between the real estate component and the ports component as an effective way to provide a better service package for customers.

In the past, there was a port component and a real estate component, which Carver said were not connected. He explained that this collaboration is not the first time something like this has happened with an inland port but it is the first time it has happened in Florida.

“There is now this connection with the port, the rails, and the warehouse, and we are working now to create an incentive package that will benefit shippers who analyze the Port of Miami and bring their cargo through there to the Florida Inland Port destination,” said Carver.

He said this is a model that has been implemented in Georgia, Mississippi and elsewhere, which will provide a combined benefit to both ports and to the development that will be realized by the shippers who use both an ocean port and an inland port.

As long as an inland port is located in the center of the consumer base it is going to serve, its proximity to an ocean port is secondary, according to Carver. In this case, the Florida Inland Port is located far enough from the Port of Miami to relieve congestion that would otherwise occur were it closer and had more truck traffic coming in and out of the port picking up and dropping off containers.

In this collaboration, JLL is acting as the project development advisor for the Florida Inland Port and in that capacity it is working to attract the support of port authorities, state government and enterprise zone officials, as well as work with state officials on legislation geared to offer incentives to businesses using inland ports and create a logistics model to “prove up” the Florida Inland Port as a logistics model for Florida and attract business partners and other stakeholders needed to come together.

“This strategic collaboration fits into our development strategy and solidifies our relationship with the Port of Miami and the other container seaports in Florida,” said Preston Perrone of the Florida Inland Port, in a statement. “Our objective is to improve the efficiency in the Florida shipping system, and working with the state’s major seaports we can help Florida truly emerge as a national center for distribution and logistics.”

JLL officials told LM the firm recently inked a Memorandum of Understanding for a similar partnership between the Port of Jacksonville and the Port of Palm Beach and the Florida Inland Port.