Port Manatee’s containerized cargo trade keeps rose nearly 74 percent during the first six months of the port's current fiscal year in comparison to the same period during the last fiscal year. Port Manatee-based World Direct Shipping, now in its eighth year of importing produce and other gods from Mexico, continues to augment its service offerings, while Fresh Del Monte Produce, which has been bringing Latin American fruit to its Southeast distribution center at the port since 1989, is now deploying new-generation, energy-efficient containerships.

In the recently completed first fiscal half, Port Manatee also reached a new pinnacle in containerized cargo tons handled, with the 499,716 short tons of containerized loads moved in the past six months up 56.6 percent over the previous record of 319,096 short tons handled in the first half of fiscal 2020. Total short tons of cargo moving through Port Manatee in the first half of fiscal 2021 reached 4,859,490, up 6.5 percent from a year earlier. The overall increase was mainly driven by the containerized cargo boom, as well as a 24 percent rise in dry bulk tons handled, to 1,088,328 short tons. General cargo throughput, led by big gains in lumber and wood pulp imports, rose 10.7 percent, to 261,969 short tons.