Holt proposes expansion into Camden, N.J.
The Holt family, whose privately held businesses operate marine terminals on both sides of the Delaware River, in both Philadelphia and Gloucester City, N.J., reportedly now wants to expand into Camden.
According to reports in the Camden Courier-Post and Trenton Times, Leo Holt has sent a letter to New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine proposing that Holt businesses operate the Broadway and Beckett Street marine terminals that are now operated by South Jersey Port Corp. Those facilities handled 3.9 million tons of cargo in 2006.
Leo Holt is an officer of several of the Holt companies, which were started by patriarch Thomas J. Holt Sr. The Holts have long dominated the stevedoring business along the Delaware River.
Neither Holt nor Corzine’s office could immediately provide copies of the letter, nor were they available for comment.
The Courier-Post said New Jersey provided the port with $9 million for debt service and to make payments in lieu of taxes, and that Holt argued a lease to his company could help end operating subsidies.
The Holt family operates the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal in Philadelphia, the principal container facility in the region, as well as the Gloucester Marine terminal across the river.
The Holts were once the owners of Puerto Rico carrier NPR-Navieras. But Navieras went out of business in 2001 and Holt companies filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code.
Those financial problems caused Martin Mascuilli, secretary-treasurer of Local 1291 of the International Longshoremen’s Union, whose members are employed by Delaware River Stevedores and work ships at the South Jersey Port Corp. facilities, to question how the company could now expand.
Mascuilli said if a private company is to take over the terminal's operations, then there should be a competition by bid. But he also expressed concern about concentrating so much of region’s waterfront in the hands of a single company.
While ILA members work at the Holt’s operation at Packer, Mascuilli said the ILA was locked out and replaced with an unaffiliated union, Dockworkers No. 1, at the Gloucester terminal in 1993.
He complained the Gloucester terminal “was built on our backs,” and alleged the dockworkers there today are underpaid. Any new buyer should pay “area standard” wages, he added.