By Karen Robes Meeks
The Port of Oakland is moving 27 percent more containerized meat shipments than it did in the last four years.
Last year, the port handled the equivalent of 60,000 TEUs of fresh and frozen meat exports, up 24 percent from 2013, and imported about 6,000 containers, up 64 percent.
About two-thirds of those exports were bound for Japan, while meat shipments were imported mainly from Australia and New Zealand.
These numbers are expected to increase this fall with the opening of Cool Port Oakland, a 283,000-square-foot refrigerated distribution facility capable of handling as much as 50,000 containers of beef, pork and poultry annually.
