WASHINGTON: Import volumes fell at the nation’s second-largest seaport in October, a month that normally sees heavier cargo traffic ahead of the holiday season. The Port of Long Beach, Calif., handled 307,995 loaded import containers in October, down from 310,482 during the same month last year.
The monthly volume, a 0.8% year-over-year decline, also marked a steep drop of 14% in loaded imports since August, a deeper falloff than usual from the year’s busiest month. It is the latest sign that retailers have scaled back their orders from overseas after seeing inventories pile up far ahead of demand earlier in the year. In August, Long Beach moved 358,262 loaded import containers, up nearly 20% from the same month in 2014.
Some say the rapid pullback from the annual peak shipping season this year is the result of labor-related congestion that began to affect West Coast ports late last year. Many shippers stocked up early and sent more goods through alternate distribution channels to avoid potential stock-outs.
Several container ship operators, including Neptune Orient Lines Ltd., said they saw little if any peak-season shipping growth this year as they reported weak third-quarter earnings.
Import trends in Long Beach also vary depending on what happens in the neighboring port of Los Angeles, which has yet to report its October cargo volumes. As container vessels have gotten larger, one ship’s arrival at Los Angeles or Long Beach, depending on where it berths, can skew monthly volumes significantly from one port to the other.
So far in 2015, loaded imports were up 2.6% in Long Beach. On the export side, Long Beach saw a jump of 6.5% to 128,308 full containers from last October’s 120,445. The expansion came despite a strong U.S. dollar and tepid growth in American exports over all. For the first 10 months of 2015, loaded exports were down 5.1% in Long Beach.
The number of empty export containers continued to skyrocket in October, extending a nationwide trend analysts had attributed in part to the coming preholiday shipping season, during which those empty containers would be filled with goods in Asia and returned, full, to U.S. shores.
However, much of that anticipated traffic doesn’t appear to have arrived at Long Beach, where imports fell and stacks of empty export containers continued to sail East. In October, the Port of Long Beach handled 183,681 empty containers, nearly 21% more than last October.
