JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – If it feels like the global supply chain has been lurching from one disruption to the next, JAXPORT’s top commercial executive says that’s not your imagination — it’s the new reality.
“You really put your finger on something because the uncertainty has kind of become the new normal,” said Robert Peek, Chief Commercial Officer at JAXPORT, during a conversation with Kent Justice on This Week in Jacksonville: Business Edition.
Peek said the difference between the pre-pandemic economy and today is the stacking of crises — not single, isolated events. “You’ve not really had time to take a breath between them,” he said, pointing to conflicts overseas, shifts in trade routes, tariffs, and even weather-driven chokepoints affecting the Panama Canal.
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Despite that turbulence, Peek said JAXPORT’s approach is to keep investing for the long haul rather than reacting to short-term headlines.
“What we think is we have to play the long game and that is: continue to make investments and find opportunities that make sense for the long term,” Peek said.
One of the biggest game changers for Jacksonville: a deeper shipping channel. “The big difference we have now that we didn’t then is our deeper shipping channel,” Peek said. JAXPORT’s main channel is now 47 feet deep — up from 40 feet — which he said helps Jacksonville compete for larger vessels.
Peek also emphasized that JAXPORT’s growth strategy is built on diversification — both in the types of cargo handled and the parts of the world it trades with.
“The way we look at things is we want to be very diversified… and that means diversified in the kinds of cargoes we handle and also where we trade,” he said.
And he pushed back on the idea that ports only matter to massive corporations. Peek said small businesses can benefit too — even those that only ship a few containers a year. He highlighted a new export training effort with the Florida Small Business Development Center designed to help local entrepreneurs navigate the harder parts of exporting, from pricing to legal and insurance questions.
On tariffs, Peek said one of the clearest trends is a gradual shift away from China in container trade data — and growth in alternatives like Vietnam.
Looking ahead, Peek said he’s watching the fundamentals: inflation, interest rates, and consumer confidence — the drivers that ultimately determine demand for the goods that move through ports.