At our next Conference, our terminal tour will take us alongside the Mississippi River, allowing us to tour some of our Member’s operations. The Mississippi River is known for its huge reach from the Northern part of USA to the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico at Southwest Pass 120 miles (193km) downriver of New Orleans in the State of Louisiana, a total length of 2,340 miles (3.766 km). The intensive and very efficient system of river barging, with land-based and mid-stream terminals provides for the movement of hundreds of millions of tons annually. We will be visiting Impala Terminals with an expansion project on biomass and Zen-Noh Grain terminal, one of the largest and most efficient grain terminals on the Lower Mississippi River for export loadings.

Of course Safe Operations will be highly ranked on our program list. One of the main items we will be focusing on, will be the operations under difficult weather conditions. Louisiana and other parts of the Southern USA are heavily impacted by extreme hurricanes. In recent years, more parts of the world are impacted by complicated weather types. How to prepare? How to defend yourself? What can you do to protect your people and handling equipment from these dangers? How can you reduce the impact on your operations? An important part of our conference will focus on this from a broader perspective, putting it on a global level. From a USA perspective, we will have speakers from the southeastern USA. Next to these, we will have speakers, panellists and other active participants from South-America, Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle-East and Oceania.

We will also be focusing on training, equipment developments and changes in the digital world. Fitting into the geographic perspective of Louisiana, we will have a showcase on data capture from floating mobile harbour cranes to a terminal operating system for a wholly Mid-streaming organization.