Port Unveils New Strategic Plan, New Branding

The Port of Tacoma has big plans. The framework for those plans was unveiled at Tuesday’s annual breakfast, in the form of a new 10-year strategic plan and updated brand identity. According to the press release, the four main areas of focus for the strategic plan focus on the Port’s areas of strength.

 
• Make strategic investments that enhance waterway, terminal, road, rail and industrial property infrastructure to create the most efficient, productive and cost-effective system possible to move freight to market.
 
• Create opportunities for future investments by attracting new business opportunities with healthy income streams and increasing diversity of the Port’s business portfolio.
 
• Demonstrate “best in class” care for business relationships with customers and key stakeholders.
 
• Grow the Port responsibly to ensure the community continues to support trade-related jobs.

Specific initiatives coming out of this framework include:

 
• Redeveloping and expanding the peninsula bounded by the Sitcum and Blair waterways into a highly efficient container terminal capable of handling the world’s largest ships quickly and capably.
 
• Expanding Tideflats rail to receive and deliver mile-and-a-half-long full-unit trains, as well as a second rail crossing over the Puyallup River.
 
• Develop a new bulk facility on the Blair Waterway.
 
• Continue working with customers to expand and enhance existing cargo terminals as the market grows.
 
• Develop future new cargo capacity in partnership with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.
 
• Move toward zero-emission technologies at cargo terminals, continue cleaning up contaminated property and restoring critical habitat.
 
• Take a leadership role in seeing State Route 167 completed from its current end in Puyallup to the Tideflats.

The Port also has a new logo, meant to symbolize “a refocused mission to ‘deliver prosperity by connecting customers, cargo and community with the world.’”

Like every other business, the Port has taken a bit of a hit with the economic downturn, but it has also been a source of good economic news for Tacoma. Port CEO John Wolf admits that the new plan is an ambitious one, but calls the initiatives listed “necessary for the Port to remain competitive.” Well, they know their business better than we do.

To track accountability to the new plan, the Port will measure its progress against its “10 targets in 10 years” list. The first seven items on the list are pure bottom line: increase volumes, improve operating margins, increase income and return on assets. Items eight and nine look at the green bottom line: clean up an additional 200 acres of Port-owned contaminated property, and reduce diesel pollutants from cargo operations by 85%. And the final item promises a focus on job creation: increase Port-related direct jobs by 4,700 and indirect jobs by 2,000.

A component of the nearly year-long process of developing the new plan was outreach to the public, including strategic planning open-houses. Does it seem like anything is missing from the plan?

Read the full press release, and link to the strategic plan at www.PortofTacoma.com.

Previously from Exit 133: Port of Tacoma Strategic Planning Open Houses.