Overall April box volumes at Long Beach (pictured) rose 12.5% compared with April 2012 to 519,500 teu, continuing a trend of steadily increasing activity at the second-largest US container gateway.
Neighbouring Los Angeles, the top US box hub, recorded a fall for April to 640,300 teu, down 9.5% compared to April 2012.
In the first four months of 2013, Long Beach has handled just over 2 million teu of laden and empty containers, a 17.2% on-year rise.
Over the same period, Los Angeles has seen comparable volumes fall just under 6% to 2.4 million teu.
In a statement, Long Beach said that the first four months of 2013 saw 18.5% more imports, 11.8% more exports and 21.5% more empties.
“These increases are in part due to the larger ships calling at the port more frequently and the addition of service lines starting in later 2012.”
Long Beach remains the smaller of the two southern California gateways in terms of container traffic, moving 6 million teu in 2012 against 8 million teu through Los Angeles.
Earlier this week, a research house warned that US inbound containers full of retail goods for shopping malls could “trickle to a standstill” across the top 12 US ports by the end of this summer despite an expected increase in May of 3.3% compared with the same month in 2012.
The warning came from the monthly Global Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.
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