Los Angeles, Long Beach and Northwest Alliance (Tacoma & Seattle) are the major entrance to US market. As of July 2020 the volume of containers handled by these ports started to pick up overtaking 1.8 million TEU monthly benchmark. October 2020 and March 2021 are the two individual months which did more than 2 million TEUs.
Due to change of shopping pattern and reduction of production capacity in the US for the reason of pandemic lockdown, imports to the US West Coast grew dramatically, loaded imports containers handled by these ports have been well over 900,000 TEUs each month since.
In terms of the first 4 months, total loaded imports containers handled were 3.81 million TEUs, a sharp increase of 42% YoY, while same period of 2020 saw a decline of 13%. Compared with same period of 2019, we still witnessed a growth of 24%.
But imports need boxes with which empty box relocation is the key. Due to equipment shortage, shippers in Far East and Southeast Asia are fighting for empty boxes to load their stuff to the US market. In the first 4 months, the West Coast ports handled 3 million empty boxes (TEU) which represented a 50% increase over the same period of last year.
Source: Simon Young
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Xinde Marine News.
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