SEATTLE - Halfway through 2015, the seaports of Seattle and Tacoma began acting as one, as the Northwest Seaport Alliance transitioned from idea into reality.
Instead of competing against each other as they had for many decades, the ports now present a united marketing and planning effort to sell itself as the nation's third largest ocean going freight gateway, behind the ports of New York and New Jersey and Long Beach and Los Angeles in California.
Now that 2015's officially in the books, how did the alliance do?
In new numbers released Wednesday, overall business at the Northwest Port Alliance is up 4% over 2014. Overall container volume that accounts for most of the freight handled is up 3% to 3,529,198 containers handled as measured by the industry standard of 20-foot equivalent units.
The handling of cars, particularly the import of foreign made automobiles, is up 4.3% to 183,305 vehicles, which is a new record. All of that came in a year that started with the long running labor dispute that affected all West Coast ports, which began in 2014.
But the 2015 numbers are not all positive. Domestic container traffic, principally shipments to the state of Alaska, are down, blamed on low oil prices affecting Alaska's economy. Breakbulk cargo, the shipment of loose raw materials that don't go by container, such as logs and heavy equipment like bulldozers, is down 7.6%. Containerized exports down 4%, blamed in part on a strong U.S. dollar that makes American exports more expensive and the economic slowdown in China.
