14 Oct Record Cargo Numbers at the Port of Long Beach Back-to-Back Records Reflect Customer and Consumer Confidence
In recent months, our partners have demonstrated their confidence in the Port of Long Beach by shipping record amounts of cargo through our premier West Coast gateway. We sincerely thank you for choosing Long Beach.
Throughout the year, my colleagues and I have crisscrossed the country to listen to your concerns about last season’s industry-wide congestion problems and describe the many actions we have taken since to recover and continually improve our Port’s performance. In the process, we have begun to restore shippers’ confidence in our core value proposition – providing the most direct, fastest and least costly way to ship goods between Asia and America’s major markets.
Through a combination of new and returning shipment volume, cargo surged through the Port of Long Beach in July, with an 18.4 percent increase over the same month in 2014, setting the record for volume in the Port’s 104-year history. Then in August, an even higher record was set, with overall cargo volume growing by 22.8 percent year-over-year.
This upward trend continued in September with cargo volumes increasing over 4 percent and resulting in our best quarter ever. Even considering our slow start earlier this year, Long Beach cargo numbers have grown faster than the overall U.S. economy through the first nine months of 2015 – up 5.2 percent compared to the same period last year.
Going forward, we remain committed to working with all of our stakeholders – cargo owners, ocean carriers, terminal operators and others – to optimize the marine supply chain. To this end, our Supply Chain Optimization initiative is underway, which is approved by the Federal Maritime Commission and jointly supported by the Port of Los Angeles. Together, we are facilitating and promoting fundamental changes in the way goods move by ship, rail and truck to achieve end-to-end visibility, reliability and certainty of delivery. These efforts will incrementally improve velocity, fluidity and efficiency throughout the supply chain, and continually drive costs out of the system.
In addition, the Port of Long Beach is halfway through the nation’s most aggressive capital investment program, spending over $4 billion over 10 years – or about $1.1 million a day – to build North America’s cleanest and most technologically advanced mega terminal, new bridge and road infrastructure, expanded on-dock rail capacity, and much more. We’re building the “Port of the Future” to respond to your shipping needs today and the rapid-fire changes occurring in our industry.
Thanks again for your business and for playing a key role in the exciting changes occurring at the Port of Long Beach and the San Pedro Bay.