Modern logistics depends on warehouse high-tech automation, AI-enabled demand and supply monitoring and projection, and complex systems to ensure that companies and consumers get deliveries when and where they want. And yet, one major backbone in global trade is still enabled by transportation — ships that can carry almost incomprehensible amounts of volume and weight between continents. And ships mean ports.

In general, seaports are important to the entire industry. As a recent Colliers report on big-box industrial, the number of seaports available to regions is one of the major factors in driving strategic locations. A recent analysis by CoStar noted that there are record numbers of large industrial properties near major U.S. seaports.

During Covid, "you saw the influx of containers and ships going to the West Coast," Kelsey Nastasi, manager of industrial research at JLL, told GlobeSt.com. It may have been necessary, given health issues on the East Coast and increased traffic between North America and Asia, but it raised some problems.