A shipment of snow peas from Guatemala were flown from South Florida to Amsterdam last night as part of Florida’s first ocean-to-air transshipment program designed to save perishable cargo shippers time and money.

Broward County’s Port Everglades was the port of entry for the first shipment of perishable cargo participating in the new program, which was developed in partnership with Crowley Maritime Corp’s Miami-based subsidiary Customized Brokers and Miami International Airport (MIA).

The program allows Central American produce to reach European markets faster by expediting turn times, and expanding customers’ distribution.

“Crowley has been a leader in serving the ocean and inland needs of our Central America produce growers for over 50 years, and this program achieves the latest in a long line of service enhancements designed to help our customers serve new markets more efficiently,” said Crowley’s Steve Collar, Senior Vice President and General Manager, International Liner Services. “The liner services our customers know and trust can now be combined with an air option to give them a global presence.”

Customized Brokers and MIA recently received approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to coordinate ocean shipments of produce from Latin America to Port Everglades, and then on to cargo planes at MIA for a flight to their final destination in Europe and Asia. CBP granted approval for expedited processing of the ocean-to-air shipments in addition to the waiving of customs duties.

The 10 tons of peas were safely packaged to easily transfer from an ocean container to air cargo containers while maintaining freshness. After the ocean container was off-loaded at Crowley’s terminal at Port Everglades, it was trucked south to MIA and transferred into air cargo containers and placed on a Centurion Cargo flight bound for Amsterdam the evening of February 2.

“This integrated ocean-to-air cold chain solution will offer customers the most efficient way to speed perishables to new markets,” said Frank Larkin, Crowley Senior Vice President and General Manager, Logistics. “As customers seek new markets to distribute their produce, this is a valuable offering in our full suite of services and embodies our commitment to innovation and high performance at Crowley.”