Port of Toledo drives 7,971 jobs, $906 million in annual economic impact
Posted By: The Toledo Blade on August 10, 2023. For more information, please click here to read the source article.
Freight in and out of the busy Port of Toledo means 7,971 direct and indirect jobs to the region and $906.2 million in annual economic impact, a new maritime shipping study shows.
Those numbers are up substantially from five years ago, the last time Martin Associates of Lancaster, Pa., published its study on the impact of shipping on the Great Lakes through the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond.
The Port of Toledo and Port of Monroe are two of 41 U.S. and Canadian ports along the route from Duluth, Minn., to the ocean closely studied by Martin Associates.
Jobs from the Port of Toledo have grown by nearly 1,000 since the 2018 study, in part, because of the opening of Cleveland-Cliffs’ Direct Reduction Plant in Toledo in 2020 on 100 acres at the port.
The plant heats iron ore at the plant using natural gas to produce hot briquetted iron ready for steel-making blast furnaces.
About 2 million tons of iron ore now come into the Port of Toledo annually for processing, said Joe Cappel, vice president of development for the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority.
The 906.2 million in economic activity was up 35 percent compared to the $669 million in economic impact identified by the 2018 study.
The Port of Monroe also is an economic driver, the recent Martin Associates study shows: It is responsible for 1,064 direct and indirect jobs and about $85 million annually in economic activity.
The study is called the Economic Impacts of Maritime Shipping in the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Region.
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