News
With most imported holiday season merchandises already here, inbound cargo volumes at U.S. major container ports are expected to slow during the remainder of 2023, according to the Global Port Tracker report released recently by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Hackett Associates.
The NRF is forecasting record holiday sales and a growth of between 3% and 4% over last year. An expected total of between $957.3 billion and $966.6 billion would easily top the record of $929.5 billion set last year.
The U.S. ports covered by Global Port Tracker handled 2.03 million TEUs of containers in September, down 0.2% from the same time last year but up 3.5% from August. It was the first time that imports had reached the two-million-TEU mark since October 2022.
The ports have not yet reported October numbers, but Global Port Tracker projects the month at 1.92 million TEUs, down 4.2% year over year. November is forecast at 1.88 million TEUs, a 5.8% increase from the same time last year that would be the first year-over-year gain since June 2022. December is forecast at 1.85 million TEUs, up 6.8%.
Those numbers would bring 2023 to 22.1 million TEUs, down 13.5%. Imports during 2022 totaled 25.5 million TEUs, down 1.2% from the annual record of 25.8 million TEUs set in 2021.
January 2024 is forecast at 1.87 million, TEUs, up 3.7%, while February—historically the slowest month of the year because of Lunar New Year factory shutdowns in Asia—is forecast at 1.72 million TEUs, up 11.1%. March is forecast at 1.73 million TEUs, up 6.5%.
