A peak on the West Coast
As predicted, the Californian Port of Long Beach set a new record in 2021 by handling more than 9.38 million teu. This corresponds to a 15.7% increase from the previous record of more than 8.11 million teu moved in 2020.
While imports took a significant leap up of 14.6% up to almost 4.6 million teu, exports declined by 2.6% to 1.44 million teu compared to last year. Empty containers, more and more a game changer in terms of volumes and dwell times, were up 27.5% to 3.4 million teu.
Port of Long Beach executive director Mario Cordero is optimistic: “I look forward to enhancing productivity in 2022 by advancing our move toward 24-7 terminal operations and deploying data-sharing technologies.”
The Port of Long Beach saw 980 container vessel calls in 2021, down from 1,042 a year earlier. The introduction of the “container dwell fee” announced in October 2021 is still deferred. With this fee, the port aims to charge ocean carriers for cargo containers that remain too long on the docks. (sh)