Los Angeles, Long Beach box traffic nosedives in December

CONTAINER traffic at the two busiest southern California ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have registered a significant decline in 2008, with December's throughput plummeting as the global economic crisis intensified.

Long Beach registered an 11 per cent decrease in total container traffic for the whole of last year at 6.5 million TEU, marking the worst result for the port in more than two decades as exports and imports were sharply down.

Box volumes in December fell 25 per cent to the lowest monthly total since February 2005. In December, loaded outbound containers bound for overseas markets fell 34 per cent, after declining 23 per cent in November.

It was a similar story at the neighbouring port of Los Angels where total container volume for 2008 amounted to 7.8 million TEU, a six per cent fall compared to the previous year's result of 8.4 million TEU, after December's total plunged by 15 per cent compared to the same month in 2007. Loaded export boxes plummeted 26 per cent in December for the US' largest port, while imports fell 12.8 per cent.

The report said that trade in general is expected to deteriorate rapidly in the first quarter of 2009, with Asian exports projected to slide by 10 per cent in the second quarter.

Newark's Journal of Commerce said that shipping executives have told the port of Los Angeles that box volume is expected to fall by between 15 and 30 per cent in the first quarter.

Source: Schednet