The West Calcasieu Port currently has seven tenants. Port Director Lynn Hohense said they make up a family of tenants with mutually beneficial skills.
“Tenant synergy is a strong element of our culture at this port,” he said.
The oldest and largest, Devall Enterprises, provides fueling, towing, fleeting, barge cleaning, and diesel repair services and handles all of the waterway activities at the port.
Orion Marine Group (formerly F. Miller and Sons), a heavy civil marine contractor, recently negotiated a five-year lease agreement extension for its marine construction services, dredging, repair and maintenance salvage, underwater inspection and a dozen other marine services. The company has been with the port since 2009.
River Barge Works, with the port since 2013, specializes in cleaning dry barges. These are barges that ship petroleum coke, scrap iron, grains, other non-liquid-type products. They have been on board for about two years and they lease space on the barge basin. Also joining the port in 2013 was United States Environmental Services. They provide dry barge cleaning and wet barge cleaning and scraping. That year USES partnered with Tresco. Tresco scrapes the the bottom of barges and stores whatever chemicals it recovers in mobile storage facilities located on-site which are then shipped off for recycling.
In January of this year, Tauber Oil Co. come onboard. The company’s 30,000-barrel-capacity refueling barge supplies vessels on the Intracoastal Waterway with ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel.
The most recent addition to the port’s list of tenants is CEMEX Cement of Louisiana. The company currently provides concrete support across the Intracoastal for Sempra through contractor CBI.
Hohensee said there is a strong possibility of an eighth tenant by year’s end.
“And we’re looking for more,” he said.