Business Development Manager Georgette Reidburn

Even with in-person events and calls on hold for now, The Northwest Seaport Alliance’s Business Development team has been busy engaging customers and stakeholders virtually via online meetings, webinars and events.

NWSA’s Business Development Manager Georgette Reidburn recently spoke on a panel for the Transportation, Warehousing & Logistics — Business Resources Webinar, hosted by the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County. The webinar included a review of labor market statistics for the transportation, warehousing and logistics industry. In the last 10 years, the industry has seen a 5.6% increase annually in workers.

One area that has seen an increase is transloading. More companies are transloading at the port of discharge and then directing cargo to destinations where inventory is low or responding to a surge in demand for certain products and increasing speed to market. Because of this trend, the NWSA has seen an increase in transload import cargo.

Our region has responded to this cargo shift. With the growing demand for transloading in the Pacific Northwest, there are more than 100 transload warehouse facilities currently operating in our region today. Furthermore, we expect over 10 million square feet of additional capacity to have come online this year. The Puget Sound area is the second largest distribution center hub on the West Coast, and the fourth largest in the U.S. There are over 274 million square feet of active industrial warehouse space located within miles of our terminals.

We remain engaged with the local warehouse community and offer resources to shippers and supply chain stakeholders looking for facilities and warehousing options. In addition to a list of transload services in the Puget Sound area, our website offers a list of available facilities. On the Service Provider page, you can search and compare facilities based on different needs, including location, rail served, cargo handling capabilities, commodity types, etc.