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. The wisdom of that strategy has been demonstrated with the move last summer of the Grand Alliance container shipping consortium from the Port of Seattle to the port’s underused Washington United Terminal. And the port’s efforts to diversify its cargo mix received a significant boost with the approval of new contract last month with a major new non-container customer, Targa Sound Terminal.

Targa will spend up to $150 million of its own money to build a new petroleum products tank farm on one of the port’s prime development sites, the old Kaiser Aluminum Co. smelter plant. That new facility will create 50 new permanent jobs at Targa and countless other jobs for railroad and longshore workers. Those workers will handle the unit trains bringing the cargo from the Great Plains and the ships and barges that will move crude and petroleum to Washington refineries and distribution facilities.

While Targa’s investment and its employment increase won’t match those generated by the Grand Alliance’s container operations, it will be a major step in further balancing the port’s business toward noncontainer operations. The Targa commitment is just the latest in a series of steps the port has taken to attract and retain other businesses on the Tideflats.

The port has revived the log export business, which had disappeared from port’s waterways a dozen years ago. It has signed up two shipyards, one a yacht builder and the other a small warship builder, to occupy World War II shipyard buildings once slated for demolition.

It has inked an extended contract with Temco for the Port’s Schuster Parkway grain terminal that ensures that facility will continue in operation for decades to come. It increased the port’s breakbulk volume by 68 percent in 2012. Breakbulk cargoes are items such as earth-moving machinery and tractors too bulky to be containerized.And the port has agreed to rehabilitate and repair several decades-old buildings to house smaller contractors and businesses.

The port, under chief executive John Wolfe, has found new focus in pursuing a wide variety of water-related businesses.

Targa will initially spend about $80 million for the first phase of the project and then expand it as the need demands, said Goodman.The logistics company will continue to operate its facilities on the Hylebos Waterway. It will connect the Kaiser site tank farm with the Hylebos site by pipeline. That pipeline will be built in the Taylor Way right of way.The Kaiser site facility will be connected to the East Blair wharf with another pipeline. Goodman said he expects about 15 ships and barges will call at that dock monthly when the facility is working at capacity The ships will typically be 600-to-700-foot-long tankers equipped with double hulls. The East Blair Wharf is another port facility that’s been unused since it was completed in 2009, said the port.The tankers and barges will be surrounded by a boom when they’re loading and unloading to prevent any spilled oil from spreading, said Goodman.Targa is a member of a consortium of oil handlers that maintains oil containment and cleanup facilities and boats on Puget Sound to respond to a spill.

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