CONTAINER volumes at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach deteriorated even further in November, with no rebound expected until the second quarter of next year – possibly even the second half, reports New York’s FreightWaves.
The Port of Los Angeles had 13 ‘blanked’ (cancelled) sailings in November, following 20 in October. Carriers will blank 11 more sailings this month. ‘We haven’t seen numbers like those since the start of the pandemic,’ said Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka.
Jeremy Nixon, CEO of shipping line Ocean Network Express (ONE), said his company has been blanking about 20 per cent of its sailings since October and expects to take out about half its capacity around Chinese New Year, which will be celebrated in 2023 on January 22.
Los Angeles reported total November throughput of 639,344 TEU, down 21 per cent year on year.
Empty containers came in at 242,148 TEU, exports at 90,116 TEU.
Imports sank to 307,080 TEU, down 24 per cent year on year and 9 per cent versus October. This November’s imports were 17 per cent below those in November 2019, pre-COVID.
Both Mr Seroka and Mr Nixon pointed to the continued absence of a West Coast port labour contract as a key culprit.
At the neighbouring Port of Long Beach, total November throughput came in at 588,742 TEU, down 21 per cent year on year. Empties totalled 204,313 TEU and exports totalled 124,988 TEU.
Long Beach’s containerized imports fell to 259,442 TEU, down 28 per cent year on year and 12 per cent compared to October. Imports this November were 11.5 per cent below imports in November 2019, pre-pandemic.
Asked about the outlook for 2023, Nixon highlighted the impact of the Lunar New Year holiday. It is being held earlier than usual next year, and Mr Nixon believes factories will be offline longer than usual.
‘It looks like most of the factories in China and Vietnam are going to take quite a long break this time,’ he said. ‘Typically, they will take two weeks off. [In 2023] we’re looking at four to five weeks. Factories will close around January 7 and [the break] will run till about Feb. 6. Then there will be quite a long ‘rain shadow’ afterwards as it will take time to get production up and running.
‘We’re prepared for a very soft February in terms of sailings coming out of Asia,’ he continued. Given two-week sailing times across the Pacific, he said ‘that will manifest itself for la arrivals as a very soft February and March as well.
‘We’ll probably see some pickup in seasonality around March, April and May,’ he noted.
Mr Seroka said, ‘We also see some normality coming back into play in Q2 and beyond if we can flush out a lot of the inventory at the retail level and push it through during these holiday season sales.’
