Pompeian Olive Oil navigated challenges of Port of Baltimore closure, Key Bridge collapse

BALTIMORE -- Thousands of bottles of olive oil whir through Pompeian's facility daily, but there were tense moments as the company, which has called Baltimore home for more than a century, navigated one of its biggest challenges—the closure of the Port of Baltimore after the Key Bridge collapse. 

"We needed that oil pretty bad, and when the bridge collapsed, we had a ship on the water we had to direct last minute," said Salim Benjelloun, Pompeian's vice president of operations. 

Benjelloun said that ship—with 1.4 million gallons of olive oil—was scheduled to arrive at the port the day after the bridge collapse.

"We needed 300,000 gallons to be discharged sooner than later for the quality of our product not to be impacted, for our employees to be protected and not interrupt operations whatsoever," Benjelloun said. 

They were able to get some oil off the vessel at Tradepoint Atlantic. The rest went temporarily to New York. 

Navigating the bridge collapse was costly

"We're talking millions of dollars; we're not talking hundreds of thousands in terms of financial impacts," Benjelloun said. 

Benjelloun believes Pompeian came out stronger than ever and said the company is committed to Baltimore. 

"We've been here 120 years, so flexibility in dealing with the supply chain and distribution is who we are," Benjelloun said. "We work together. Things happen. They can happen anywhere. It's not because they happened here that we lost trust."

Gamble pays off

The final challenge was a shipment from Europe that Pompeian coordinated to arrive just as the Key Bridge disaster site was reopening to larger ships, a gamble that paid off.

"If we were not able to discharge that, it was going to be a whole other very complicated situation for us," he said. "There were 10 to 15 days when we were like, are we going to be able to discharge this vessel or not? But during that time frame, we were in such close communication that we were not left wondering. I don't think we could have done better to keep supply going."

That included daily communication with the Unified Command, which achieved another milestone over the weekend, lifting a 940,000 pound section of the Key Bridge from the Patapsco River—the massive steel that once pinned the Dali—as they worked to open the full width of the channel this coming weekend. 

"We fully and heavily rely on the Port of Baltimore. We're in Baltimore because of the port," Benjelloun said. "With everything that happened in the port of Baltimore, we're not backing up from that. If anything, we've seen that in a worst case scenario, we were still able to manage."

Pompeian has been in business in Baltimore for more than 100 years. Benjelloun credits their employees with helping them get through the recent challenge. 

"They were like, 'What can we do?' We have employees who were on vacation when this happened and we're just like, 'I'm here. My computer is here. Let me know what I can do for you.'"