NRF says retail container ports quiet, but could see challenges ahead
03 Feb '06
5 min read
A low rating means “business as usual” with no serious congestion, delays or diversion of cargo anticipated.
The current six-month outlook is for slower growth at West Coast ports than during the same months in 2005. Market share gains that were seen in Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma are not likely to continue at the same pace.
The many new high-capacity vessels being added to transpacific services may also affect all-water routes through the Panama and Suez canals. On the East Coast, growth at the ports of New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston and Savannah has been driven in part by new regional distribution centers built for Asian imports that will not revert to West Coast ports.
For railroads serving ports, the few lingering hurricane impacts on the national rail system are being cleared. Despite continued high diesel fuel prices, port trucking is operating smoothly.
Nationwide, ports surveyed handled 1.21 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) of container traffic during December, the most recent month for which numbers are available.
The figure is down 4.1 percent from November, but still up 4.8 percent from December 2004, reflecting the seasonal downturn but an increase in year-to-year levels. Over the report's six-month forecast period, traffic is expected to decline slowly to a low of 1.1 million TEU in February, still up 0.4 percent from a year ago, before climbing to 1.39 million TEU in June, up 10.7 percent from June 2005. One TEU is a 20-foot cargo container or its equivalent.
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