State produces shipping 'baseball cards'
By WALTER C. JONESMorris News Service
ATLANTA — Businesses looking for opportunities in Georgia have a new tool with the release Thursday of fact sheets produced by the state on the logistics operations in every county.
Page Siplon, director of the Center of Innovation for Logistics that produced the sheets, describes them as baseball cards. Instead of batting averages, the cards have stats about trucking capacity, warehouses and rail access.
For companies looking to locate a plant, the fact sheets show them how they could bring materials in and ship finished goods out to domestic markets or the ports in Savannah and Brunswick. The connection points are identified as dots on the state and county maps.
For companies in the logistics industry such as trucking firms, the gaps in the state’s logistics network represent opportunities for them.
“Frankly, there are a lot of counties where there aren’t many dots,” Siplon said.
Siplon unveiled the fact sheets, called County Logistics Spotlights, at the convention of the Georgia Economic Developers Association in Savannah.
One of the attendees, Walter Sprouse, said having the information on hand is important in working with industrial prospects who want details quickly.
“The whole time I’ve been in Augusta, I’ve never had anybody say ‘let me call you back tomorrow’ because the Center for Innovation and the Georgia Ports Authority has always been very responsive,” said Sprouse, executive director of the Development Authority of Richmond County. “That’s the kind of information we need.”
The fact sheets are available online at www.GeorgiaLogistics.com on the site developed by the Innovation Center, a subsidiary of the Georgia Department of Economic Development. The next version will group the information by regions as well as by county.
