Import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to increase 3.3 percent this month over the same time last year as retailers make final preparations for the holiday season, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released Friday by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.
“The holidays are almost here and retailers are ready,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president for supply chain and customs policy at the NRF. “Merchants have been stocking up since summer and there should be plenty on the shelves as consumers begin their holiday shopping.”
The cargo report comes a day after NRF forecast 3.7 percent growth in holiday sales this year over 2014. While imports provide a barometer of retailers’ expectations, cargo volume does not directly correlate with sales figures because each container counts the same regardless of the value of its content.
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Ports covered by Global Port Tracker handled 1.68 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units in August, the latest month for which numbers were available. That was up 3.9 percent from July and 10.4 percent from a year ago. One TEU is one 20-foot-long cargo container or its equivalent.
September was estimated at 1.62 million TEU, up 2.1 percent from 2014. October is forecast at 1.61 million TEU, 3.3 percent ahead of from last year, while November volume is predicted to increase 7.2 percent year-on-year to 1.49 million TEU, and December to be down 0.9 percent at 1.42 million TEU.
Those numbers would bring 2015 to 18.3 million TEU, up 5.7 percent from last year. January’s volume at ports is forecast to reach 1.44 million TEU, which would be up 16.5 percent from weak numbers seen a year earlier just before West Coast dock workers agreed on a new contract that ended a months-long labor dispute. February is forecast at 1.35 million TEU, up 12.9 percent, also skewed by the labor dispute.
Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett said West Coast ports have largely recovered their share of cargo following the labor dispute, with the West Coast accounting for 59 percent of volume, the East Coast for 37 percent and the Gulf Coast for 4 percent. But the inventory-to-sales ratio remains “stubbornly high” due to the influx of cargo that came through after the dispute ended.
“We would have thought that by now the aftermath of the disruption at the West Coast ports had worked its way through, which would help to reduce inventory,” he said. “This is not the case.”
Global Port Tracker, which is produced for NRF by the consulting firm Hackett Associates, covers the U.S. ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., on the West Coast; New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Va.; Charleston, S.C.; Savannah, Ga.; Port Everglades, Fla., and Miami on the East Coast, and Houston on the Gulf Coast.