Troy Layton<\/a>, the Director of Operations and Maintenance at SeaPort Manatee, says there are several products that helped the port reach that record cargo amount this year \u2014 including produce and construction materials, along with two other high-volume products.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019ve gotten a lot of new business recently with our bulk liquid and fuels \u2014 those have dramatically increased,\u201d Layton said.<\/p>\n
A planned expansion has officials thinking even bigger for next year.<\/p>\n
As part of SeaPort Manatee\u2019s 20-year vision plan, the facility will continue to expand its infrastructure to keep up with demand.<\/p>\n
![\"SeaPort](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1110_bn9_seaport_manatee_cargo_1.jpeg\")
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SeaPort Manatee handled 11,855,828 tons of cargo in the 2025 fiscal year. (Spectrum News\/Julia Hazel)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking to expand our container operations because we see that more cargo is moving toward containerization. So we\u2019re going to build Phase Three of our container operation, and that\u2019s another 16 acres to add to our tenants. We can bring in a higher volume of containers,\u201d Layton said.<\/p>\n
As SeaPort Manatee continues to expand and grow, businesses like World Direct Shipping are excited for the future.<\/p>\n
Layton said they anticipate another increase in business when their container operation is complete. As they create more space, there will be more room for containers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PALMETTO, Fla. \u2014 SeaPort Manatee is making waves, moving more cargo than ever before. The 55-year-old port handled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2031,274,558,27600,7088,115,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,14104,835],"class_list":["post-41600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-local-business","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-julia-hazel","tag-manatee-county","tag-news","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-topic-latest-local-business-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"As](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1110_bn9_seaport_manatee_cargo_3.jpeg\")
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