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Representatives from at least seven major steamship and railroad lines will converge in West Des Moines on March 24 to discuss challenges facing the global transportation industry.

The 2010 Global Transportation Forum will give importers and exporters a chance to meet and talk with industry service providers and will include three separate panel discussions.

An afternoon of networking will be the highlight of the event at the West Des Moines Marriott, said Tim Woods, president of the International Traders of Iowa (ITI), the forum’s organizer.

“This will be a superb opportunity for Midwest companies to meet face-to-face with global shipping and railroad representatives to establish new relationships and negotiate better shipping rates,” Woods said.

Officials from CMA CGM America Inc., Evergreen Shipping Agency Corp., Hamburg Sud, APL Limited, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway and Union Pacific Railroad will participate in morning panel discussions. Two other shipping lines – Hapag Lloyd and Nippon Yusen Kaisha – are also expected to attend the conference.

Peter Hurme, senior editor of Seattle, Wash.-based Cargo Business News, will moderate the panel discussions, including an outlook on the financial sector by Joe DeJong, a commercial lending officer with Bankers Trust Co., and Curt Hanson, trade acceptance group principal at Export-Import Bank of the United States.

Peggy Kerr, an international marketing manager for the Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED), will kick off the event with an address on the “State of Iowa Exports.”

“The state is very active in helping small and medium-sized companies get into exporting,” Woods said, pointing to the IDED and the U.S. Department of Commerce as major supporters. “They do a fabulous job, and we work jointly with them as much as possible.

“The morning is mostly an opportunity to have some questions answered,” Woods said, adding that a lack of available shipping containers, which companies depend on to transport their goods, is one of the biggest problems currently facing Iowa exporters.

According to IDED, citing statistics from Global Trade Information Services Inc., the top five Iowa exports in 2009 were machinery, vehicles, meat and miscellaneous grain seeds, as well as food waste and animal feed, including byproducts of ethanol production.

“We focus a lot on exports,” Woods said, adding that the ITI has approximately 80 member companies.

“The largest challenge is dealing with the recoil taking place in the shipping community since the economic downfall,” Woods said, adding that ship lines have been forced to limit the supply of shipping containers in order to push up their rates.

“We in the Midwest are faced with some real challenges with changes in the way steamship lines have to do business,” Woods said, which has resulted in fewer containers making their way inland.

“The capacity has dropped, and the export demand for containers has not,” he said, “leaving Midwestern cities without the equipment necessary to move their products.”

For every three containers brought into the United States, Woods continued, only one is exported.

“If that supply continues to shrink, it really has a major effect on Iowa shippers,” he said, as they face higher costs associated with transporting their products to major coastal ports.

“We’re faced with a real shortage,” he said.

But Woods said limiting supply has been necessary to steamship lines’ survival.

“The majority of fleets are parked down in the bays, full of empty containers, sitting there because the drop in our whole world economy has impacted them tremendously,” Woods said. “You can only bleed so much money a month for so long.”

Many containers are sent back to Asia empty, he added, cutting the supply even further.

Those business decisions, which have had “a huge effect on this middle part of the nation,” Woods said, are one of the issues expected to be addressed during the forum.

A few questions Woods expects to be raised: What strategy should Iowa exporters use to secure additional ports for containers in order to move products competitively? Why do shipments from the Midwest always get a low priority for loading on a vessel?

Another area pivotal to local and regional exporters competing in a global economy is getting available containers here from the coast.

“That’s why the railroads are so important to the Midwest,” Woods said. “It’s not often that you get the opportunity to visit with Class I railroads one-on-one in a setting like this.

“Oftentimes you go to these kinds of things, and they are all full of one meeting after another, and there really isn’t a lot of time to sit down at a table and visit with someone about your own questions,” he said.

That’s where the 1 to 6 p.m. formal and informal networking sessions come into play. After lunch, private rooms will be available for 30-minute confidential networking meetings. A large room, intended to foster more discussion and to promote business transactions, will also be open.

And two receptions, one for early arrivals on March 23 and a second on March 24, will be held.

Woods expects most ITI members, including companies such as Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. and Kemin Industries Inc., will be represented at the day-long forum.

“It’s essential to our business community to create dialogue in discussing opportunities for international trade so we can better participate in a global economy,” he said.

The cost is $75 per person and includes breakfast, snacks and lunch. Doors will open at 7:30 a.m. For more information or to register, go to www.iowatraders.org or contact Steve Ferguson at (515) 494-4979.

“This is a unique opportunity,” Woods said.