Entrepôt

Uncommon card · No. 181463

An entrepôt (English: ON-trə-poh; French: [ɑ̃tʁəpo] ) is a transshipment port, city, or trading post where merchandise may be imported, stored, or traded, usually to be exported again. Typically located on a crossroads, river, canal, or maritime trade route, these trade hubs played a critical role in trade during the age of sail. Modern logistics, supply chain networks, and border controls have largely made entrepôts obsolete, or reduced them in number, but the term is still used to refer to duty-free ports or those with a high volume of re-export trade. Railways, container ships, air freight, and telecommunications have created a world in which commodities and manufactured goods are shifted from one part of the globe to another in regular, controlled, and reliable streams, eliminating the factors which once made entrepots central to trade networks; see just-in-time manufacturing. But, as Dutch economist T. P. van der Kooy has pointed out and P. W. Klein has restated, before the Industrial...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Jane023, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl