The Missouri Director of Agriculture, Richard Fordyce will be in St Joseph Thursday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the St. Joseph Regional Port Authority Facility.

Officials will gather this afternoon at the facility off Fourth Street near the Missouri River railroad bridge to celebrate the addition of new equipment needed to unload bulk product from barges onto trucks.

The St. Joseph Regional Port Authority was formed in 1987 and has had a long road of redevelopment efforts in the Stockyards Industrial Park to become a functioning river port and multi-modal facility.

The facility currently serves primarily to bring fertilizer into the region and to ship out grain products.

The event at 2 p.m. will be hosted by the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce.