Cargo volumes contribute to record-setting May
The Port of Los Angeles handled more than 1 million cargo containers in May, an achievement that continues a months-long streak of record breaking and comes on the heels of the nation’s busiest port topping 10 million container units in the current fiscal year.
Both milestones, said Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka, were firsts for any port in the Western Hemisphere. Seroka made the announcement in a short YouTube video posted on Tuesday.
The port moved 1.12 million 20-foot equivalent units — or TEUs, the industry’s standard measurement — last month. That was up 75% over May 2020 when the port was in dire straits as business plunged shortly after the coronavirus pandemic began. Five months into the new year, overall cargo volume is 48.5% higher than during the same period last year.
This May was the busiest month in the port’s 114year history. It also marked the 10th consecutive month
of year-over-year increases and the first time a Western Hemisphere port has handled more than 1 million TEUs in a single month.
Longshore labor shifts, meanwhile, are up 20% compared to a three-year average, Seroka said.
But the port also is watching a new outbreak of coronavirus in south China, where ports are operating at just 50% capacity. About a third of sailings headed for Los Angeles come from that region.
Reuters last week reported that congestion at container shipping ports in southern China is worsening as authorities step up disinfection measures amid a flare-up in COVID-19 cases, particularly in the Guangdong province,
a key manufacturing and exporting hub.
Concern also continues over the trade gap between imports and exports at the Port of Los Angeles.
The current trade gap between imports and exports is 4.9 to 1, the widest “we’ve seen in our time,” said Seroka, who recently testified before Congress on port issues.
The Port of Long Beach, which reported its May numbers a week earlier, also continues to see imports surge, breaking its all-time cargo record for the second time in three months.
The Long Beach port moved 907,216 TEUs in May. It was the first time in that port’s 110-year history that more than 900,000 TEUs were moved in May.
It was the 11th consecutive month Long Beach, the second busiest port in the nation, had broken its monthly cargo records.