Australian Beef Imported

Cool Carriers (USA) Inc., a shipping concern that will move to Port Hueneme from Long Beach at the end of 1993, has already begun unloading Australian beef at the Port of Hueneme.

Thus far, three shipments totaling 11,000 tons have reached the port, said Cool Carriers President Gerald A. Fountain. The meat is stored at Terminal Freezers Inc. in Oxnard before being shipped throughout the United States. Fountain said he expects to import 90,000 tons of the meat annually. The meat is mixed with American beef to make hamburgers and sausages.

Fountain said that when Cool Carriers’ 150,000-square-foot terminal at the Port of Hueneme is completed, he expects to augment the beef shipments by importing 150,000 tons of bananas annually from Ecuador and exporting 200,000 tons of Sunkist citrus fruit each year to Japan.

“The beef formerly was imported through East Coast ports,” Fountain said. “We’re currently shipping the fruit through the Port of Long Beach.”

All 15 employees at Cool Carriers’ Long Beach headquarters have indicated they will stay with the company when it moves to Ventura County, Fountain reported. In addition, he said the firm will employ about a dozen dock workers in Port Hueneme.

Cool Carriers is a subsidiary of Cool Carriers (Svenska) A. B. of Stockholm. “Our parent company is the biggest operator of refrigerated ships in the world,” Fountain said.