In 2010, the Port of Seattle had a banner year, breaking the 2 million teu mark and setting a port record. This year is the Port of Seattle’s Centennial Year and what better way to celebrate than to do it all over again?By George Lauriat, Editor-in-Chief, AJOTLinda Styrk, Managing Director of the Seaport for the Port of Seattle, was quick to point out to the AJOT that the stars were aligned for the Port to hit 2.1 million teus during a period that many places are still trying to pull out of recession. “We were the beneficiary of eighty additional [non-service] calls,” Styrk noted. But ships, as all port authorities know all too well, can choose with the equivalent of their feet. And in this case, eighty ships chose the Port of Seattle, which is a trend, not a coincidence. There are some very good reasons for Seattle’s ship seduction. From a very basic point of view, the location and facilities work well for steamship lines working their Asian strings. The Port has four container terminals, along with 24 cranes, 11 container berths up to 50 feet deep, along side. The facilities lie in close proximity to two interstate highways and have access to two Class 1 rail services (BNSF and UP). From an economic perspective, even though the Port is a gateway to the Midwest and Eastern markets, Seattle has a relatively large local consumers market and a reasonable export base that includes desirable reefer and temperature sensitive cargo. But the real reason for Seattle’s success is a little more complicated. Part of the formula is being, as Styrk calls it, “fee free”. The Port of Seattle has worked extremely hard to be business friendly to steamship lines and that involves keeping down the costs of port calls. This is the competitive advantage that the Port of Seattle has developed over the last few years. “Our strategy has been to broaden the base of Port stakeholders, to have more engagement with more groups, so that they are aware of the complexities of the business,” Styrk said adding, “containers are not little tax boxes but job boxes.” Inside A Record Year The year 2010 was remarkable for the Port of Seattle. Last year the Port’s international business was nearly 900,000 full inbound boxes and almost 560,000 export teus. One of the reasons for the record numbers was the addition of Maersk/CMA CGM. Maersk, which formerly called in the neighboring Port of Tacoma, moved over with the service linkup with CMA CGM. In 2010, the Port had 1,244 ships calls as compared to 1,212 the year before. Containerships represented 787 calls of the total traffic. But full ships were the result of economies on both sides of the Pacific improving, particularly China. The Port’s economic links with the PRC are critical to its box success. In monetary terms China is by far the largest trade partner of the Port. In 2010, the two-way trade amounted to $22.7 billion, or about 53% of the Port’s total dollar value volume. On the inbound side of the equation, China exported nearly 20.3 billion worth of goods through the Port. Conversely, the Port exported nearly 2.5 billion worth of freight to China. Just about half of that export total was grain and other food related commodities. The importance of the China market is easy to see when compared to the second largest, Japan. Japan’s bilateral trade with the Port amounted to nearly $6.4 billion with the import side at $4.5 billion and exports at around $1.9 billion, a substantial amount of freight but small in comparison. Another aspect of the Port’s portfolio is the trade to Alaska and Hawaii. In 2010 the Port processed 304,000 teus of domestic (mostly Hawaii and Alaskan) business. A vast majority of the business is with Alaska. In 2010 the Alaskan trade was over 200,000 teus while Hawaii was just short of 100,000 teus. Styrk thinks the Alaskan trade – Seattle’s often considered as the gateway to Alaska – will continue to improve as the economy strengthens. The Port has two barge services and also is a second home to m