DATE: Friday, September 19, 1997            TAG: 9709190989

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MEREDITH COHN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   25 lines

STORAGE FACILITY TO BE DEDICATED

Norfolk International Terminals will dedicate its 80,000-square-foot cold storage facility today, the Virginia Port Authority announced.

Virginia International Terminals Inc., which operates the state-owned port, built the $7.5 million facility that will be used by Perdue Farms Inc. to keep its poultry chilled while it awaits export.

The Salisbury, Md.-based Perdue - the East Coast's largest poultry producer - plans to use Virginia ports exclusively to ship poultry from Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

Perdue poultry will be exported to Russia, Eastern Europe and the Far East, the port authority said.

The move is expected to generate 13 additional ship calls for the port annually and thousands of hours of labor for the region's longshoremen. It will also make Hampton Roads one of the nation's leading poultry ports.

Hampton Road's ports have been experiencing substantial growth in recent years, althoughcargo shipments such as Perdue's poultry have been declining as containerized shipping has increased.

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