Shipping is post-pandemic economy's future
With vaccines now in the pipeline, local business developers are thinking about how to get an edge in the post-pandemic economy.
Odds are you ordered something to be delivered during the pandemic, perhaps a lot of things. GNO, Inc. President and CEO Michael Hecht says the pandemic was a test lab for growing home delivery of goods -- and transportation logistics is right in New Orleans' wheelhouse.
"There's nowhere else in the country that is better set up for logistics, that was started for logistics, when we bought the damn place from Napoleon for the river," Hecht told WWL's Newell Normand.
Hecht said there are many reasons why any company looking to expand its shipping logistics should look long and hard at New Orleans.
"We've got the river that goes to 32 states, we've got six class one railroads," said Hecht. "We've got an airport that was third-fastest growing in the country, great highway access."
With the Port of New Orleans building a new container terminal in St. Bernard Parish, Hecht says the region's utility as a shipping hub will only grow.
And Hecht says technology and medicine are still growing segments of the region's economy. Hecht says New Orleans and its bio medical assets could be to neurological disease as Houston and MD Anderson are to cancer treatment.
