Port of L.A. Sees Dip in Volume Last Month, Overall Volumes Still Up for the Year

LOS ANGELES, CA - The Port of Los Angeles saw a dip in container activity last month, but overall volumes for the first half of the year are still up by 5.9 percent, harbor officials said.

The amount of container goods moving through the port fell by 6.3 percent in June, rolling back some of the gains made the prior month, which was considered the busiest May in the port's history.

But Los Angeles container activity remains ahead of the previous year. During the first six months, the port handled 4,133,575 Twenty-Foot Equivalents, or TEUs, of container goods, up 5.9 percent from the compared period in 2015.

"We're encouraged with year over year growth in the first half of 2016, even though June was not as robust as the same period in 2015 due to industry trade patterns," Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said. "We are hard at work with our stakeholders optimizing supply chain efficiencies, building unparalleled infrastructure and listening to our customers."

Port officials say shifts in the shipping industry could be behind the dip in June. Shipping companies have entered agreements to share vessel space, and some retailers may be timing their purchases differently.

Some of the vessel-sharing alliances have potentially caused port activity to alternate between the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, with containers that would have gone to one port being consolidated with vessels docking at the other.

The sharing of vessel space by different shipping lines has become a more popular practice in recent years, especially with the shift to larger ships that are thought to reduce costs and require more cargo to fill up.

The container volume figures at the Long Beach side of the port complex have yet to be released. The volume numbers also leave out "break bulk," which refers to large or irregularly shaped cargo such as steel.

-- City News Service, photo via Pixabay