The Logistics of Logistics The Zergratran Story with Bryon Bennett
Byron Bennett and Joe Lynch discuss the Zergratran story. Byron is the Founder and CEO of Zergratran, an innovative and sustainable high-capacity transportation company that is building the world's first tunnel to expedite shipping goods between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. In doing so it will offer faster, smarter, safer and cheaper solutions to existing alternatives.
About Byron BennettByron Bennett is the Founder and CEO of Zergratran. Byron is a graduate of The Wharton School with a background in entrepreneurship, finance, capital raising and strategic planning and, most recently, a founder of multiple fintech companies. He built a network of early stage investors and six thousand LinkedIn followers through successful capital raising efforts and popular businesses like The Chocolate Library and Discovery Wines, both in the East Village of New York City. Prior to Zergratran, Byron was the CEO of Liquidity 10X (L10X)r, a fintech company that helped startups raise capital through Reg D and Reg A filings. Prior to L10X, Byron was the CEO of Collective Wisdom Technologies (CWT), a crowd-driven platform for funding seed stage companies (filed Reg A+ offering). Prior to CWT, Byron was CEO of Springtime Solutions, a lead generation platform for banks and marketplace lending companies; accepted into the INV Fintech accelerator run by Bank Innovation and Fiserv. Byron is passionate about entrepreneurship and teaches entrepreneurship classes on www.outschool.com. He regularly mentors entrepreneurs and maintains a 30+ year strong relationship with NFTE - Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship https://www.nfte.com/. Byron holds a BS in Economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
About ZergratranZergratran is an innovative and sustainable high-capacity transportation company that is building the world's first tunnel to expedite shipping goods between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. In doing so it will offer faster, smarter, safer and cheaper solutions to existing alternatives. Led by a visionary team of engineers and Wharton and Harvard scholars, Zergratran is an impact-driven company that uses emerging technologies to revolutionize the future of logistics as well as leverage its global economic and environmental impact. Our goal is to create a better, smarter, healthier and more efficient world, to build a legacy and a better future for humanity. Zergratran develop and manage ESG and technology focused infrastructure projects that will boost the efficiency of the global shipping and transportation system. It will start with Puerto Internacional Las Americas (PILA) in northern Colombia, a project which will use Maglev technology to transfer shipping containers between ports on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through an underground tunnel.
Key Takeaways: The Zergratran Story- Byron Bennett is the Founder and CEO of Zergratran, which develops and manages ESG and technology-focused infrastructure projects around the world that boost the efficiency of the global shipping and transportation system.
- In the podcast interview, Joe and Byron discuss Zergratran's first project, a cheaper, faster, and cleaner alternative to the Panama Canal.
- Zergratran's first project is Puerto Internacional Las Americas (PILA) in northern Colombia. The project will develop new ports on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and transfer shipping containers through an underground tunnel system.
- The Panama Canal is critically important to world trade and unfortunately container ships are currently waiting 12 days to cross the canal.
- The Panama Canal bottleneck is causing supply chain disruptions worldwide and constraining global trade.
- The Zergratran Vision for eliminating the Panama Canal bottleneck is below:
- "Imagine a 13,000+ TEU container ship that can't pass through the Panama Canal unloads at our North Pacific port. We transfer the containers across to our North Atlantic port in 15 minutes using an underground tunnel. Waiting regional ships distribute the containers onward to the US, Gulf and Eastern ports and Europe. More containers would be better dispersed and distributed and reach their final destinations faster. And the 60% of ships that now return west to Asia mostly empty, can be filled with fresh loads from South America. This coordination creates higher profitability with long term sustainability."
- Puerto Internacional Las Americas (PILA) aims to add a new container shipping route across the Central America region. This will be the focal point of a system wide efficiency upgrade driven by automation, containerization, digitization, technology and connections to neighboring port facilities.