Oregon’s only international shipping container terminal has a new head operator, and with it, renewed hope that the service will continue in a state that relies heavily on international trade for its economic health.

Harbor Industrial Services, a private crane and equipment services based in Wilmington, Calif., will lease the shipping container terminal from the Port of Portland. Loading and unloading containers was in jeopardy of ceasing at Terminal 6, which sits 100 miles up the Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean. Signing up a third-party operator keeps that service going, potentially for decades.

Shuttering the container terminal could cut off a vital route for the state’s farmers and small businesses relying on access to global markets.

“It’s a gateway for products that are leaving the state — so hay and grass seed and hazelnuts, wood products — and those that are coming through, so tires and furniture and apparel and glass wine bottles,” Kimberly Branam, chief trade and economic development officer for the port, said at a meeting Wednesday approving the lease.

Branam told commissioners that trade activity at Terminal 6’s shipping container facility helps support around 1,500 jobs in the state. The service also helps save shipping costs for Oregon businesses, she said, that might otherwise need to send exports to terminals in Washington or California.

Hopeful transition after years of struggle

In April 2024, leaders at the Port of Portland, which also owns industrial land and runs Portland International Airport, let Oregonians know they were planning to shut down the container service they had been losing money on for years.

But the shipping container terminal’s struggles started more than a decade ago with a major labor feud between longshoremen and the company previously running the terminal. The labor dispute forced operations at Terminal 6 to a near standstill in 2015 when two major carriers stopped using the Port of Portland.

The port stepped in to run the terminal in 2018, but leaders have always preferred having another company manage operations. In 2023, Port officials thought they had a third party operator lined up. But the deal fell through, and after facing a $30 million shortfall over a few years, port officials told lawmakers it would end the service in 2024.

In response, Gov. Tina Kotek pledged to find $40 million to help keep the shipping container service open. A stipulation of the funds was finding a third party operator, like Harbor Industrial Services, to lease the facility.

“What it does for us — other than making sure that we have somebody who has the skill set to really optimize the container terminal — is it insulates us financially from some of the downside and the fluctuation,” Branam said.

Harbor Industrial Services has been involved at the Port of Portland since 2014, according to Teresa Carr with the Port of Portland’s trade and economic development division. She told commissioners that the company started out servicing cranes and other equipment.

“Then they became our stevedore,” Carr said, “and the stevedore is really the entity who hires, manages, oversees and makes sure that the union laborers who are moving the cargo are working safely and efficiently.”

Until the port entered into the agreement with Harbor, Carr said it was the only public entity on the West Coast that operated its own container terminal.

The initial lease is for seven years with the option of four extensions lasting a handful of years each. The Port will also sell its seven ship-to-shore cranes and related equipment to Harbor for $150,000.

Kotek is applauding the deal that will keep the shipping container service open.

“Scores of businesses throughout Oregon rely on Terminal 6 to ship their goods,” the Democrat said in a statement. “Oregon communities will be better off because we came together and worked toward this shared goal.”

The lease agreement with Harbor is the second major deal the port has announced this summer. In June, Commissioners approved a long-term lease with Zaugg Timber Solutions. The Swiss mass timber company is expected to create manufacturing and research facilities at Terminal 2.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/09/10/port-of-portland-terminal-operator-oregon-shipping-terminal-international-trade/