By 2009, with the departure of melons and cantaloupes, Tampa's port was out of the fresh fruit business. In January 1997, Turbana Corp., a cooperative of Colombian growers, shifted its banana imports from Tampa to Gulfport, Miss. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Port Manatee seeks slice of Panama Canal growth (By the end of 2015, Port Manatee was getting more than a billion bananas a year.) In 1989, Del Monte stunned the port when it moved its banana shipments from Tampa to Port Manatee near Bradenton. The unloading moved away from the Arthur N. Over several decades, that scene faded from view. It's kind of nostalgic to think about how, as a little boy in elementary school, I would look at the bananas, and now we've got them coming back." "I still remember going over there as a kid," port board chairman Steve Swindal said, recalling a schoolyard rumor that tarantulas would hitch rides on the bananas. In mid-century, when the economy and leisure time options were both more simple, some Tampanians would make a day of going to the docks to buy bananas directly off the boat. At the historic banana docks, hog-sized stalks of bananas would rise on conveyor belts from the holds of freighters.Īt the end of the line, scores of sweating longshoremen would hoist and carry them off for delivery. At one time, bananas were among the port's best-known imports.
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