News
Despite concerns over the government shutdown, import volume at the U.S.'s major retail container ports is expected to grow 9.1 percent in October over the same month last year, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released recently by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.
The forecast comes as NRF is predicting that this year's holiday sales will grow 3.9 percent over last year to a total of $602.1 billion. Cargo import numbers do not correlate directly with sales because they count only the number of cargo containers, not the value of the merchandise inside them.
August, September and October are the months when most of the holiday season's merchandise is brought into the country. The 4.42 million cargo containers expected for those months combined is a 5.9 percent increase over last year and accounts for 25.6 percent of all retail imports for the entire year.
U.S. ports followed by Global Port Tracker handled 1.48 million TEUs in August, the latest month for which after-the-fact numbers are available. That was a 2.5 percent increase over July and up 3.8 percent from August 2012.
September was estimated at 1.47 million TEUs, up 4.9 percent from last year. October is forecast at 1.46 million TEUs, up 9.1 percent; November at 1.33 million TEUs, up 3.4 percent; and December at 1.31 million TEUs, up 1.8 percent. January 2014 is forecast at 1.35 million TEUs, up 2.9 percent from January 2013, and February at 1.18 million TEUs, down 8.1 percent from last year.
The total for 2013 is forecast at 16.3 million TEUs, up 2.7 percent from 2012's 15.8 million TEUs. The first six months of 2013 totaled 7.8 million TEUs, up 1.2 percent from the first half of 2012.
