Port of Oakland container volumes fall 4.9% in 2015

A late-year recovery in imports nearly erased the sharp downturn in early 2015 caused by congestion and reduced productivity that were the result of an impasse in longshore labor contract talks.    The Port of Oakland moved 2,277,515 TEUs in 2015, a 4.9 percent decline from the prior year.
   Full export container traffic was down 11.5 percent for the year to 858,151 TEUs. The port attributed that decrease primarily to the result of continued strength in the U.S. dollar, which makes American goods more costly and, therefore, less competitive overseas.
   Full import containers last year amounted to 844,234 TEUs, just a 0.2 percent decline from 2014. It could have been much worse, however, the port noted – imports had dropped nearly 40 percent in January and February because of the impasse in contract talks between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and employers, but then recovered later in the year.
   The grand total of containers handled by the port also includes 575,130 TEUs of empty containers (both imports and exports) compared with 578,881 TEUs of empties in 2014.
   Last year, because of extended waiting times at West Coast ports, some carriers offloaded all cargo in Los Angeles and Long Beach and returned ships to Asia without calling Oakland, while others diverted ships to Oakland instead.
   The Northern California port said that was reflected in the cargo figures for last month – December import volumes decreased 6.3 percent to 69,661 TEUs from the same period a year ago, when import volumes spiked due to extraordinary cargo diversions from congested Southern California ports. December exports were off 7.9 percent to 69,384 TEUs.