Mark Tollini, Senior Deputy Port Director  

FTZ No. 231 • 2,061 total acres • 15 berths • 7 million sq. ft. warehouse space • 35-ft. channel

Rail: BNSF, UP, Central California Traction Company

Highway: I-5, I-4

Top export destinations: Mexico, Guatemala, Japan

Top export commodities: Coal, Sulfur, Iron Ore

Mark Tollini: Being 75 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, a lot of folks don’t realize that there’s even a port here, particularly within the industry. So I think that if there is a message I want to get out, it’s that the port does exist. It’s on deep water. It has excellent interconnectivity with all the various modes of transportation, both highway and rail, and we have a significant amount of property readily available for development. We are very adept at doing public/private partnerships, and we’ve been doing that for quite some time and we think we’re very good at it.

Right now on our export business, one of the things we did recognize is that there’s a huge demand for rail-generated business coming out of the four corner states and even out of the Midwest, needing a gateway out into the Asian market primarily, but the world in general. I think that we provide the opportunity with sort of green field out here that you can build what you need to build, but we’re very friendly when it comes to business, and we know how to partner with private enterprise and leverage our operating dollars in conjunction with the private investors here. We understand their business because we are basically a quasi-operating port.