Port also dedicates new cranes to speed operations The Port of Cleveland and The Lubrizol Corporation, one of Ohio’s largest exporters to Europe, today announced the maker of specialty chemicals is now exporting products directly to Europe through Cleveland’s Port. Lubrizol, a Berkshire Hathaway company headquartered in Wickliffe Ohio, is now shipping container loads of specialty chemicals produced at its facilities in Northeast Ohio via the Cleveland-Europe Express (CEE) service. The CEE service, a partnership between the Port of Cleveland and the Spliethoff Group of the Netherlands, is the only scheduled ocean service between the Great Lakes, Europe and points beyond. Port President and CEO Will Friedman said, “We are extremely pleased Lubrizol is now a customer of the Cleveland-Europe Express. As a world leader in the specialty chemicals industry and a leading global company based in Northeast Ohio, Lubrizol is exactly the type of Ohio exporter we aimed to serve. While it is still early, this is a critical milestone for the Cleveland-Europe service”. Although the CEE has been carrying Ohiomade exports to Europe since its inception, Lubrizol is the first large Ohio exporter to shift volume from the traditional East Coast routing to the CEE. Lubrizol’s Director of Supply Chain Americas, Matthew Joyce, said, “As a major exporter from Northeast Ohio, we are excited to now have this option to ship directly from the Port of Cleveland, eliminating the overland segment to East Coast ports. We fully support this concept as a way to help Heartland producers reach global markets more efficiently and compete more effectively”. In conjunction with the Lubrizol announcement, the Port officially commissioned two new, state-of-the-art mobile harbor cranes. The cranes, Leibherr model 280’s, will dramatically improve the efficiency of port operations, especially loading and unloading shipping containers filled with products made by Lubrizol and other Ohio companies. Port CEO Friedman said, “These cranes and other investments at the Port allow us to compete for and win business like Lubrizol’s. Global commerce demands high productivity and these machines, when operated by our skilled longshoremen, deliver the results”.