End to labor strike too late for some

A week after West Coast dockworkers and their employer came to a tentative labor agreement, eight ships are anchored in Puget Sound and thousands of containers are sitting at terminals in Tacoma and Seattle, leaving Washington importers and exporters to wonder how long it will take for business to return to normal.

The exact time is impossible to calculate. The Port of Seattle has said Washington will clear its backlog faster than California — taking maybe two weeks — while union leaders say two months and local companies peg it at three months. Losses could reach as high as 50 percent of citrus exports, or $500 million, according to trade groups.

More Washington apples are being shipped to Asia. But growers say the slowdown of cargo this winter amid a West Coast contract dispute cost them an opportunity to find more buyers for a record crop.

"This year's crop is 28 percent larger than last year's, and with large crops in the Eastern states as well, we were aiming to increase our exports by that much," said Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington Tree Fruit Association, a Yakima-based group that compiles industry statistics. So far, apple exports to Asia are up 9 percent compared with the 2013-14 shipping season.

The slowdown cost state apple and pear shippers $95 million in canceled orders and missed potential sales, said Kate Woods, vice president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, a Yakima-based organization that represents the fruit industry in trade issues.

The most recent crop of California almonds, the state's top agricultural export, was harvested shortly before cargo ships started getting delayed in November. The congestion only worsened at the 29 West Coast ports, forcing ships to wait offshore to unload huge containers.

For California's almond farmers and processors, the severe cargo backlogs have raised fears that foreign buyers could cancel contracts for almonds stuck in storage and buy from other countries. Losses would factor into next year's prices, and market-share cuts could affect sales for years to come.

The 2014 almond crop was projected to contribute about $11 billion to the California economy and almost 104,000 jobs, 75 percent of them outside the almond industry, according to a study by the University of California Agricultural Issues Center.

California almond exports grew 29 percent in 2013 to $3.2 billion, according to the latest data available from the U.S. Census Bureau. Such torrid growth makes the unexpected roadblocks at the ports even more galling to growers and processors.

Source: nwaonline.com/seattletimes.com/columbian.com