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w w w . i n s i g h t o n b u s i n e s s . c o m S e p t e m b e r 2 0 14 • I NSIGH T | 33 I N S I G H T O N S H I P P I N G & LOGISTICS B y S e a n P. J o h n s o n B rian Madigan readily admits he is not your "standard shipping" exporter. "e tough thing for us is that everything we make is different," says Madigan, who is responsible for business development and process sales at FEECO International, Inc. in Green Bay. "e things we make can weigh thousands of pounds and don't exactly fit into the standard shipping container." But that hasn't stopped FEECO from becoming a worldwide distributor of its custom-built equipment for industries as diverse as mining, paper, fertilizer and chemical processing. Indeed, the company has been exporting almost since its founding in 1951. ese are not the kind of items you can drop in a FedEx box and get there overnight. "We once shipped a rotary granulator, one of the largest we built, to Namibia," Madigan says. "We had to truck it to a port on the Mississippi, ship it by barge to New Orleans and then by ship to Namibia." Not your standard delivery by any means, but the question of "How do I get it there?" is one of the top issues companies must deal with when they begin exporting their products, says Planes, trains or big boats An exporter's guide to picking the best way to go Brad Schneider, export development manager for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. Schneider works with companies throughout Wisconsin interested in identifying export markets for their products. While there are unique challenges to selling and delivering products overseas, those hurdles also represent valuable opportunities for Wisconsin companies – opportunities that some companies miss out on because they don't have the time or resources, he says. "A lot of our companies are small- to mid-sized and the people who run them are already wearing multiple hats," Schneider says. But exports were worth more than $23 billion to the Wisconsin economy, according to 2013 WEDC statistics. Increased exporting is seen as an important part of growing the state's economy and creating jobs. A 2013 U.S. Commerce Department study on exports found that every $1 billion in exports supports 5,590 jobs nationally. Of the $23 billion exported by Wisconsin firms in 2013, nearly $7 billion was industrial machinery, a sweet spot for hundreds of companies in the New North region. en again, Wisconsin is located pretty close to the middle of the country, which means getting the products from here to [continued] » C O U R T E S Y O F P O R T O F G R E E N B AY The Arthur Anderson loads up at the Port of Green Bay.