JEFFERSONVILLE — Jeff Miles has joined the Port of Indiana-Jeffersonville at a decisive time.
A $10 million federal TIGER grant awarded to the port in 2015 is about to be utilized: resulting in a new barge loading facility (actually called a bulk loading facility), over 2,000 more feet of railway and yet another loading facility for trucks and trains.
The port and private investors are devoting $7 million more to the project in an effort that will help tenants transfer cargo at a higher rate and potentially double the port’s bulk export capacity. The port is already handling a four-year average of cargo that’s 60 percent higher than the past four years, as 2.2 million tons of fertilizer, grain, steel and other products make their way through the port annually.
Luckily for Miles, “I really look for a new challenge,” he said.
Miles is the new director of the Port of Indiana-Jeffersonville, having been announced on Feb. 1 after the former director of six years, Scott Stewart, left the port in January to “spend more time on community development and charitable projects,” according to a news release from the Ports of Indiana.
The Jeffersonville site is one of three ports in the Ports of Indiana system. Twenty-seven businesses, many of which are in the steel and agricultural industries, make their home here in Clark County. At the port, they benefit from direct access to the Ohio River, railroads and the interstate system.
Miles isn’t a stranger to the port industry. Most recently, he was on the executive team at the North Carolina State Ports Authority for 12 years. Before that, he worked for the South Carolina State Ports Authority and for a private marine terminal company.
"Jeff's extensive port operations and leadership experience, coupled with his background in strategic planning, perfectly position our Jeffersonville port for continued growth," said Ports of Indiana CEO Rich Cooper, in a statement.
Miles took the job at Jeffersonville’s port partly because he missed his home state of Indiana. He grew up in Dearborn County, northeast of Jeffersonville. But his previous port was also beginning to focus on shipping containers, and Miles wanted something different.
“My predecessors have done such a great job, and my boss and his team have done such a great job of establishing this platform of enormous potential,” Miles said. “Helping really kind of reel that potential in and transform it from potential to reality was just kind of a cool career opportunity for me.”
Part of developing the port’s potential is seeing its $17 million expansion through quickly. The first section of the project recently opened for bids with construction expected to start this summer. The entire project should be finished by 2021.
The new bulk loading facility will allow tenants to load their barges more efficiently as rail cars are continuously pulled to transfer their product to the boats. The additional railway, which will be added throughout the facility, will create more loops for trains of rail cars to rotate around while they’re being loaded and unloaded. Currently, the port has eight existing rails, and during the busiest season, they’re full of cars, said Rodney Gross, the port’s operations manager. Finally, the port’s new intermodal facility will provide a place for trucks and rail cars to transfer product directly instead of going through warehouses.
“In this industry, there’s no greater truism than ‘time is money,’” Miles said. “Everybody’s trying to get as much value out of their assets as they can. The railroads are champions of that credo. So they want those cars in here, unloaded and back out into the system to get another load just as quickly as they possibly can. And we want to be able to process those cars as expeditiously and cost effectively as you possible can.”
Miles hopes that the expansion will help the businesses already established in the port, several of whom have the ability to grow within their existing facilities. But he’s also interested in filling the remaining 300-ish acres of vacant land within the port.
“I’d feel like I’d had had some value if we start to fill a lot of that up with good developments that can be linked to good paying jobs and economic benefit to the region,” Miles said.
The Port of Jeffersonville already provides 13,100 jobs to the community and has a total economic benefit of $2 billion annually.