Transcript
Speaker: Hello everyone, my name is Stephen Kilger. I'm the managing editor of Feeding Grain Magazine and the host of the Feeding Grain Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today as we dive deep into the issues affecting the feed manufacturing, grain handling, and allied industries.
Speaker: Today's episode is brought to you the Binwhip from Newman Systems. The powerful dual impact Binwhip removes the toughest buildup and blockages in industrial storage silos without hazardous silo entry. Learn more today binwhip.com.
Speaker: Today my guest is Amy Andrus, Executive Director of the Inland Rivers Ports and Terminals, Inc. The IRPT recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Federation of Inland Ports to advance inland waterway freight by modernizing infrastructure, expanding commercial opportunities, and accelerating knowledge sharing.
Speaker: We talk about what this memorandum of understanding is, what IRPT hopes to learn from Europe, and how it will benefit the United States. I hope you enjoy the interview. If you want to help out with the podcast and are listening to this in a podcasting app, please rate us and subscribe. If you're listening online, sign up for Feeding Gray newsletter and should watch to see when new podcasts drop and stay up to date with all the news from around the industry.
Speaker: Now, on to the show. Well, Amy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I really appreciate it. Certainly. Thanks for having me. Really excited to talk with you. i think what we have but going on is really going to impact a lot of your listeners and your readers.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely. It's a big step forward and we're excited to talk about it, especially this day and age. Our inland waterways are so important. Can you just tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at the Inland Rivers Ports and Terminals Incorporated?
Speaker: Yeah. guys You guys usually say that. do You just go Inland Rivers Ports and Terminals? Yeah, so Inland Rivers Ports and Terminals, our acronym is IRPT because everyone has one. So some folks call us the IRPT.
Speaker: We actually just celebrated our 51st anniversary. So we're not a new organization. so we have members all around the United States. I'm super excited to to announce that we even have some global terminal operators now that we've just added to the membership.
Speaker: So our members are comprised of the public ports, the private terminals, the barge lines, the boat companies, the short line railroads, trucking companies, and most importantly, the shippers that use the waterways. It's been a weird weird year in our industry with grain.
Speaker: And those relationships with our ports and our waterways are just so important to everything that our readers do for business. And you're here today. i asked you to be a guest because you guys just ah gave this me memorandum of understanding. Memorandum, that's a word.
Speaker: Memorandum of understanding between you and the European Federation of Inland Ports. Can you talk a little bit about what the memorandum of understanding is and what's going on with that relationship across the season?
Speaker: Absolutely. We're so excited because, like you said, our political climate right now and your readers and your listeners and our farmers, right, they have...
Speaker: A lot of challenges and getting their goods to market. And the Inland Rivers provides that low-cost solution in transportation and to get that grain to market. Well, where's our market?
Speaker: a lot of the farmers are shipping overseas. And so as IRPT continues to elevate the concerns and advocate for solutions, we wanted to hear from our European partners our friends across the pond, if you will, to see how can we coordinate and cooperate and learn from each other.
Speaker: so that's how the memorandum started, at the exploration of the memorandum started. And so once we reached out to EFIP, because they have an acronym too, and once we reached out to EFIP, we realized that they were just as excited as we were.
Speaker: to explore this relationship. So we went back and forth with our leadership and both sides were just very excited to propel this forward.
Speaker: So we ended up signing but last month or yeah, last month in October. And so we are in the throes of planning a visit over,
Speaker: over in Europe. We're going to take a delegation of interested IRPT members. We're going to have some executive level type of meetings just to discuss and some of the topics that we want to explore, but also see some of the facilities that are moving the products and in along the European waterways.
Speaker: Yeah, that kind of answers my next question a little bit about what immediate actions are you guys taking? This trip sounds promising. What's on the bill to be discussed once you're over there?
Speaker: So there's a lot. So i have an amazing team that works with me on staff at IRPT. And so there was a couple of days where we just gathered together and we're like, really, what do we want to explore and learn from each other?
Speaker: What are we doing really amazing here in the United States that perhaps... the Europeans would like to learn from us and vice versa. So a few of the things that we certainly, and we have three pages of topics that we want to explore.
Speaker: So each one of us is coming at it from a different aspect, whereas I may looking at be looking at it from marketing and business development. what Another one of my teammates might be looking at it from the maritime workforce and credentialing.
Speaker: And another from the infrastructure aspect. one of the One of the really exciting, in again, we have three pages ah content that we want to explore.
Speaker: but In the United States, when we talk about measuring the economic impact and the value of our river system to farmers, to other shippers, to our communities, it's always really challenging because we only have one base metric, and that base metric is tonnage.
Speaker: That tonnage, though, doesn't capture, i say, the value of the good and the value of the decongestion on the interstate system. so I want to know, how are our European friends calculating and measuring the value of their river system for transportation to their communities, to their economy, and to their lawmakers?
Speaker: Yeah, and that's a big issue in ag, right? Because... The fact is that our inland waterway system is our most efficient way to ship product. It's the cheapest. It's maybe not the fastest, but it gets it there at the best bulk. So like that whole, like the story of agriculture,
Speaker: in Our inland waterway systems, our ports, have played such an important role in that as we explain to consumers about what we do. And that message of getting more trucks off the road is a huge message for all of us. ah Because that's what most people don't care, you know, exactly where their bread is made. But they do care that they got stuck behind a bunch of grain trucks gone.
Speaker: here Not only do most people not care where the goods come from, but a lot of most people don't know that our rivers exist primarily for transportation of goods and people.
Speaker: And so we are working really hard with our members to help elevate their voices within their communities, within their states, and then, of course, across the nation as a whole.
Speaker: You mentioned you were going to look into more business and commercial opportunities with the Inland Port Network and this partnership. What kind of stuff are you thinking? well Investments, just ways that they're designing their ports and they're doing their work?
Speaker: What kind of solutions are you looking for them? Yes. So marketing and promotion is always fascinating to me. How are they marketing their facilities to shippers? What are their shippers really demanding as far as from their facilities?
Speaker: I know that when I was doing some research, I found a couple of different campaigns, marketing campaigns that they had engaged in. Such as like cooperation in the corridor and into the hinterland.
Speaker: And that seems to be a cross-marketing engagement between, say, a deep draft report of Rotterdam and a shallow draft report of Duesport in Germany.
Speaker: So how is that cooperation in the corridor going? Is it a successful operation? cross-marketing strategy and how can we implement a successful marketing strategy like that in the United States with, say, the Port of New Orleans and the Port of St. Louis?
Speaker: Or that there's a ton of different examples I could give there, but into the hinterland, it's moving that product back into the heartland of the country. And so how did that campaign start? How is it going? Has it been successful?
Speaker: And how can we maybe replicate that over here in the United States? with Were there any policies, were there any incentives that helped promote and propel that forward?
Speaker: Yeah, especially when you think about it, Europe really does have a kind of similar, not exact same system. Obviously, they're different countries and things like that, but like similar to states where we have different regulations against different across different communities.
Speaker: And that question of like, how can we work together and not be not just be competitors to think about like the system as a whole over. The ah individual competitiveness against between ports, it seems like a really useful conversation for us to have, especially as we... ah and this is The world's just more and more going to be more and more globalized. It's important for us to figure that stuff out and how we can, as America, be a good trading partner and ah good have a good, fluid inner inland waterway system for everyone to use.
Speaker: Absolutely. And you you mentioned the cross-country challenges or successes that they have in Europe. I'd love to explore that more. The operation, the maintenance of the actual infrastructure itself.
Speaker: Here in the United States, we rely so heavily on the Army Corps of Engineers being a federal organization. operation maintenance of our infrastructure rather than having each one of our states we maintain what would that look like if each of our states had to maintain the waterways and the river system and the infrastructure so how are they really kind handling that over across the pond and what can we learn from any challenges or even any successes that they've had with that
Speaker: Yeah, definitely. And other opportunities beyond just going of our ports themselves or what they're doing with sustainability, other innovations.
Speaker: Are you guys interested in swapping those ideas as well? I know sustainability isn't quite the hot topic it was a year ago, but ah still, like it's something that seems like it should be important for us to consider as we go forward.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So innovative technologies is always going to be on our radar for efficiency purposes. When we can increase our efficiencies, we have the opportunity to increase our throughput.
Speaker: And then we have the opportunity to efficiency. the cost of doing business. So we're always looking for those innovative technologies that are going to allow us to be more efficient and cost effective. So we definitely want to look at that. When we think of sustainability, though, it's how are we going to sustain river transportation for years to come?
Speaker: rather than looking at sustaining other aspects, right? So our bread and butter is how do we become more and more reliable and sustainable in the aspect of having our river available for continued growth?
Speaker: Some of that does mean the investments into the infrastructure, our aging locks, maintaining our channel. One of the things that I want to explore overseas is their lock system.
Speaker: Are there innovative technologies to their lock system? Are we more innovative in terms of dredging than they are? I think there's a lot that we could discuss there. i would love to know, are there locks? Are there their river infrastructure?
Speaker: Is that publicly operated? Is it privately operated? What does their model look like as compared to our model? And how can we learn from each other?
Speaker: Yeah, definitely. And it it's so nice to be able to see what they're doing to modernize and stuff as well. We should be taking lessons from whatever the newest projects are, right? No matter where they are happening in the world. So it would also seems like it's a great chance to just develop that relationship so we can all share the technology and things as we build and as we modernize our systems.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So we also look at, say, they the navigation for us. yeah We operate 365 on our river system. Is that the same over there? ah We want to know as far weather and seasonal challenges,
Speaker: that might affect their operations. Maybe they're exploring innovative technologies in in case of ice, right? like What are they doing to combat seasonal effects on operations? And is that something that we could maybe implement here? or Maybe we are really leading the ah the innovation there that we could share with them.
Speaker: Love to know how their river traffic is coordinated. Is it a centralized agency or is it decentralized and everybody coordinates their own river traffic?
Speaker: So ah there's just absolutely a ton, huh pun intended, that we could really explore. But one of the one of the big things that I definitely want to explore is the resiliency.
Speaker: You know, how do how does the weather and their seasonal water affect their challenge their operations, like I mentioned? What kind of climate conditions to raise the challenges? Is it low water, high water, etc.?
Speaker: And then, of course, resiliency, you always have to look at cybersecurity. Security in general, but of course cybersecurity. So are they implementing special technologies in regards to cybersecurity and protection that maybe we should be exploring over here?
Speaker: Yeah, i mean it's modern ah cybersecurity. The modern world, though, and cause needs modern solutions. So the sharing seems perfect. And like you said, everyone is dealing with climate issues and rivers being drier than they normally are or more flooding than they normally are. So, yeah, all that stuff sounds great.
Speaker: You'll have to keep us up to date with how these meetings go and what you guys learn because it sounds like a really exciting time. Thank you. We'll definitely keep everyone up to date and especially but with some that the items that we do learn.
Speaker: We're going to be a very big voice in Washington as we have been for many years, trying to implement different solutions to different challenges. We've been pretty successful in Washington. And I think that just following this exploration, we might have more to bring to the table.
Speaker: um to introduce to our members of Congress. Yeah, heck, maybe just good old-fashioned competition. Like, the Europeans are doing it this way. That's why we need to finally dredge these rivers. ah Right, exactly. managed They're doing private-public partnerships in this way over there, so... Yeah, it all sounds like a great plan.
Speaker: What else does IRPT have going on? Anything interesting? Always interesting, yes. We're getting ready to kick off our spring basin meeting season.
Speaker: Again, i mentioned we have members all around the nation. Well, we divide them based on the river they work on, and we call that their basin. So right now we have 11 different river basins, and some of them are are spanning ah well a large swath of river So if you look at our Ohio River, we might have the upper and the lower. Mississippi, we have the upper and the lower. We have 11 different river basins. And so we gather all of our members each year um at a basin meeting for free. And we say, hey, what are some of the challenges? Maybe it's river operation or maintenance, etc.
Speaker: And then we st strategize on those solutions. So we're getting ready to kick that off here January timeframe, and that will run into May. then we're going to head over for our European summit in June.
Speaker: and then we're going to come back and have a an annual conference September 1st through 4th in Kansas City, Missouri. So we definitely don't let any grass grow underneath our feet. And we're always moving and working, providing those massive benefits and resources for our members.
Speaker: Yeah, you do important work because like you all this stuff, like Congress needs pushing. They need to know what's going on. So you guys are doing great work out there.
Speaker: For anyone who wants to know more or maybe volunteer, or get involved in some way, where should they go? How should they reach out to you? Yeah, absolutely. So they can visit IRPT.net. It's real simple. IRPT.net. Learn all about us, but more importantly, learn about all of our members. We have this beautiful mapping system where we've mapped out all of the transload facilities in the United States. So it's definitely a really great tool for shippers to use if they're looking for an origination or destination transload facility.
Speaker: Use the map. It is not... member restricted and or hidden behind a login wall we're just trying to make it easier for our shippers to find our members and really propel the river system and forward to be the way of transport if you will you think it it is our best option so hopefully we get there soon thank you so much amy for talking to me today i really appreciate it thanks for having us i really appreciate the invitation for sure
Speaker: Oh, excellent. Hopefully you guys can come back soon and you can talk a little bit more about what you're doing and how this memorandum goes, what we learned from it all. You bet. Thanks so much.
Speaker: All right. And for everyone out there listening, thank you so much and stay safe.
