Port of Long Beach: August Container Volumes Enter Record Books

Southern California’s Port of Long Beach needed one month to improve its all-time-highest container volumes recorded in July, making August of 2015 the busiest month ever in the port’s 104-year history.

However, the record volumes in August included 206,625 empty containers, a 42.1 percent increase compared to the same month a year earlier.

Cargo volume, measured by the number of containers moving through the port, reached 703,652 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), a 22.8% improvement compared to August 2014. The amount beats July’s cargo volume by 13,408 TEUs. A total of 1,393,896 TEUs moved through the Port of Long Beach in July and August.

“Our partners once again have expressed their confidence in the Port of Long Beach and we thank them for their business,” said Port of Long Beach CEO Jon Slangerup. “We have been working with all our stakeholders and the results are our best month ever.”

Through the first eight months of 2015, Long Beach cargo numbers are growing faster than the overall economy and are up 5.4 percent compared to the first eight months of 2014.

“We thank our partners for choosing the Port of Long Beach,” said Slangerup. “We’re building the port of the future by investing USD 4 billion in improvements because as the economy grows, we will grow. We have not seen volume like this in our entire 104-year history and that is the clearest sign that consumers are buying.”

Imports at the port climbed to 358,262 TEUs, a 19.1 percent increase over last year, and exports grew 9.4 percent to 138,765 TEUs.