Two recent news items from Tacoma’s News Tribune:
Port of Tacoma reports best year since 2008
A new report from the Port of Tacoma shows container traffic up nearly 16 percent last year over 2011 to 1.711 million container units.
That container volume was pumped up by the move of the Grand Alliance container shipping combine to the port from Seattle in July. Four container shipping lines, NYK, Hapag Lloyd, OOCL and Zim, share shipping capacity in service from Asia to the West Coast. Two other associated shipping services also moved to Tacoma along with the Grand Alliance.
Container traffic wasn’t the only bright spot in the port’s year-end total. Breakbulk cargo, cargo too large or two oddly-shaped to fit in standard shipping containers, jumped by 68 percent last year, the port said.
Not all segments of the port’s business showed healthy increases. The port’s auto shipment business declined by 9 percent. The port’s grain export business also fell in 2012 by 19 percent because of the Midwest drought made less grain available for export last year. Log exports also dropped 35 percent because of slackening demand in Asia.
Diversifying for Port of Tacoma’s future
Among the lessons that the recent recession taught the Port of Tacoma was that relying too heavily on a single line of business, no matter how potentially profitable, was an invitation to financial hardship.
The port’s nearly single-minded devotion to turning the Tideflats into a vast container terminal from one end to the other put a strain on the port’s finances, led to layoffs and nearly left the port with a billion dollar terminal it couldn’t complete when container traffic fell 25 percent and its newest customer backed out of the terminal deal.
Now a new strategic plan, in force for a little less than a year, puts a new emphasis on diversifying the port’s mix of cargoes and improving the productivity of existing facilities instead of creating new ones.