<\/p>\n
Containerized cargo volumes hit a record high at the Port of Los Angeles last month, confirming predictions from retailers and – at least briefly – defying the COVID-19 slump. <\/p>\n
LA's total container volume rose nearly 12 percent, hitting more than 960,000 TEU for the month – an all time high. An 18 percent jump in imports drove the gains, moderated by a 10 percent fall in exports. The numbers reflect a sharp change from previous months, and when taken together, the port now expects that its total yearly volumes will decline by nine percent relative to 2019 – a smaller drop than the previous forecast of 15 percent. <\/p>\n
"August's cargo is more than double the volume we moved in March, when we dropped sharply with the onset of nationwide shutdowns," said port executive director Gene Seroka in a video address. However, he expressed caution on the outlook. “One month, or even one quarter, does not make a trend," he told Reuters. “Our economy remains in a very precarious position."<\/p>\n
According to the National Retail Federation, the spike in imports is driven by U.S. retailers restocking after a long lull, along with their preparations for the holiday season. This is reflected in vessel traffic: the port had only one blanked sailing in August, and it does not expect any cancelations on its liner services in September.<\/p>\n
Seroka added that the one-way import surge is creating logistical problems on the ground, and the port is working with its partners to find solutions. Earlier in the year, MSC deployed two ultra-large boxships to pick up empties from the LA area and reposition them to markets where they are needed most; widespread container shortages have been reported in Asian markets due to the light levels of export boxes and empties coming back from Western ports on backhaul voyages. <\/p>\n
maritime-executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Containerized cargo volumes hit a record high at the Port of Los Angeles last month, confirming predictions from retailers and – at least briefly – defying the COVID-19 slump. LA's total container volume rose nearly 12 percent, hitting more than 960,000 TEU for the month – an all time high. An 18 percent jump in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[3526,82,11371,1034,1955,3525,3223,953,7582,1309,1259],"class_list":["post-17758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-angeles","tag-container","tag-container-volume","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-los","tag-month","tag-port","tag-port-of-los-angeles","tag-posts","tag-volumes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/17759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}