deugro

Print PDF

With sixty-one employees in Houston, deugro is a global project logistics and freight forwarding company that does $100 million of business annually out of the United States. The deugro group specializes in providing logistics services and solutions for multi-billion dollar international industrial projects. deugro is a specialist in executing turn-key mega projects and shipping heavy and oversized cargo—everything from nuts and bolts to coke drums, reactors and turbine generators —for companies like GE who sell American-made products to foreign buyers.

Houston is home to the nation’s busiest export port, and many companies based in the city rely on the business generated by Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank-financed projects. For deugro, things are no different. The bank finances approximately one third of the projects deugro handles, representing about $30 million a year. Without the credit the bank provides, American companies would find it difficult to compete against their foreign counterparts, and many Houston companies that sell services to these businesses would lose out.

“If Ex-Im goes away, then a lot of the work we do here in Houston will move overseas,” Steve Drugan, deugro’s Regional Vice President for Americas, says. “Ex-Im creates opportunity for my company to win work and it also helps everyone throughout the supply chain.”

To qualify for Ex-Im financing, there is an 85-percent American-made content requirement. This means that the projects Ex-Im finances are made by American workers, assembled by American workers, and shipped by American workers.

“The whole supply chain benefits—the manufacturing workers, the truckers, heavy haulers, railroads, export packers, and ocean shipping companies. I cannot see one reason Congress should not reauthorize it,” adds Drugan. “That’s what I want to tell Washington.”