J. Christopher Lytle, Executive Director

FTZ No. 56 • 1,200 total acres

18 berths • 50-ft. channel • ICTF

Rail: BNSF, UP

Highways: 80, 880, 580, 980

Top export destinations: Japan, China, South Korea

Top export commodities: Fruits and Nuts, Meats, Machinery

J. Christopher Lytle: The Port of Oakland is located about mid-point on the U.S. West Coast, making Asia our top trading partner. This gives California and U.S. agricultural exporters a competitive advantage because of the faster West Coast transit times between Oakland and Asia.

By value, our top export commodity is fruits and nuts. It’s phenomenal when you consider that U.S. shippers moved close to $2.6 billion worth of fruits and nuts and $2.3 billion of meat through our port in a year to overseas customers. We’re helping move a lot of this high-quality food from here to Asia and other parts of the world.

We have an asset that no other premier U.S. container port can offer. The Oakland Global development at the former Oakland Army Base is putting world-class trade and logistics facilities in the heart of the seaport. This past November, the city and the Port of Oakland broke ground on the half-billion-dollar project. Oakland Global’s first phase will provide the new rail yard that the port is now building, and the city is developing about 1 million square feet of new warehouses, where exports and imports will be offloaded and repackaged adjacent to our marine terminals.