White House Port and Supply Chain Envoy retired general Stephen R. Lyons went to the Port of Oakland and held meetings with port officials and stakeholders.
Stephen R. Lyons, who has been visiting major US ports to address current supply chain issues, met with Port of Oakland executive director Danny Wan and maritime director Bryan Brandes to discuss the challenges facing Oakland’s shipping operations and to continue the federal dialogue to support solutions to the movement of goods in Oakland.
“I am committed to looking for ways to stabilise the entire supply chain across the nation and restore consumer confidence in the system, and the Port of Oakland plays an important role in our nation’s freight network,” said general Lyons.
“Oakland has been a decades-long port of choice for agricultural exports; we need to restore a full complement of services here to help all of our customers move their goods,” noted Port of Oakland executive director Danny Wan.
Later, general Lyons met with agricultural exporters, importers and maritime terminal operators who rely on the Californian port for their business.
As they told him, their activities are affected by disruptions at various parts of the supply chain such as overflowing warehouses, lack of labor at distribution centers, lack of equipment, need for more ship services to increase export capacity and need for faster movement of imports from sea terminals and reduction of cargo dwell time.
“We continue to look for creative ways to reduce port congestion and supply chain disruptions at Oakland, including building infrastructure and increased transparency of data to increase the fluidity of commerce through our port,” said Port of Oakland Maritime director Bryan Brandes.