PHARR, Texas - Luis Bazan, director of the Pharr International Bridge, has announced details of Pharr Bridge Board’s 2nd Industrial Warehouse Summit.
The summit takes place Thursday, Aug. 24, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. It will take place at the Pharr Development & Research Center in W. Dicker Road in south Pharr.
The title of the event is IWS2. The subheading is: Building a Competitive Border Region for Near-Shoring and Industrial Growth.
In his monthly report to the Pharr Bridge Board, Bazan said the summit is being jointly hosted by the Bridge Board and Pharr Economic Development Corporation. The emcee, he said, will be Jorge Torres, president and founder of Interlink Trade Services.
Explaining the need for the summit, Bazan said: “One of the issues that has come to light here in the last a year or so is that regardless of trade, regardless of the ships and trade, there is still not enough dry warehouse space for industrial capacity to fulfill the needs of trade. So it is it is up to us to bring this to the region, invite our regional partners to ensure that we're fulfilling that gap.”
Bazan acknowledged that meeting the demand for more warehouse space in the Rio Grande Valley is not going to happen overnight.
“But this is part of our educational process to bring everybody to the table, from bankers to investors to industrial warehouse developers. And in this case for this next one coming next week on August 24.”
A new feature for IWS2 will be the participation of economic development corporations from other cities.
“We have invited our economic development corporation and we have invited our neighboring cities, their economic development corporations, to participate and give their angle not just on the availability or non availability of warehouse space, but also what are we doing as a region to set us up for a more competitive border region to attract near-shoring opportunities in the future,” Bazan said.
As he has reported in previous Bridge Board meetings, Bazan said that, currently, the state of Tamaulipas is not really benefiting from near-shoring.
“If you look at the overall map for near-shoring, there's a very small percentage of companies that are looking at the state of Tamaulipas. Most of these companies are looking at the state of Nuevo León. Some of them are even looking at states down down the road. I believe one of them is the state of Jalisco.”
Nonetheless, the Valley needs to be ready, Bazan argued.
“We need to be prepared for this (near-shoring) because it's coming. It's not going to happen overnight. But we need to be preparing for this and it takes a regional approach to this because a lot of it is going to fall back on tracking not just the investments, but also the opportunities for training, the opportunities for housing, the opportunities for continuous development of the workers or the of the workforce that's coming with these companies.”
Bazan concluded his remarks by defining near-shoring.
“It’s basically bringing back those companies that went overseas to operate and manufacture. Now, because of the shipping costs of ocean freight, those companies want to be closer to their suppliers and they want to be closer to the consumers. So that is where the term near-shoring comes from in a nutshell.”
In other Pharr Bridge Board news, Bazan said Brownstone Consultants, which is playing a big role in construction of the second span of the Pharr International Bridge, will be giving regular reports at future monthly board meetings.
Editor's Note: The main image accompanying the above news story shows Luis Bazan at the 1st Industrial Warehouse Summit. The story has been updated to include audio from the most recent Pharr Bridge Board meeting.
