BURNS HARBOR, Ind. — A huge jump in the amount of cargo that came through Indiana’s ports throughout 2021.
Ports of Indiana CEO Vanta Coda says the state’s ports saw a 34-percent increase over 2020, which he says is to be expected with 2021 people a year of recovery from 2020 when the COVID pandemic was most prevalent.
What is also helping, he says, is that Indiana’s ports have not had nearly the supply chain issues that have been felt at other major ports in the United States.
“The headline supply chain problems [involve] largely imported goods coming through California ports, East Coast ports,” Coda told Inside Indiana Business. “For us here in the Midwest, we’ve not experienced that amount of disruption.”
The thing that is impacting Indiana’s ports the most when it comes to economic issues is the shortage in the workforce.
“We’ve always had a supply chain challenge largely in the workforce,” Coda said. “We’ve been in a trucker shortage for 10 years; it’s not news to anybody who deals in transportation and logistics.”
Coda said it’s a slight issue when only two-to-three percent of Millennials see transportation and logistics as a viable career path.
