Port of Long Beach topped 2003 traffic in first 11 months of 2004

Port of Long Beach topped 2003 traffic in first 11 months of 2004    With a record container throughput registered in November, the port of Long Beach handled more containers in the first 11 months of 2004 — 5.2 million TEUs — than during all of 2003, when 4.7 million TEUs crossed its docks.
   Through the first 11 months of 2004, shipping terminals at the Californian port saw a 23-percent increase in total traffic over the same period a year earlier. Container imports were up 24 percent, exports up 11 percent and empties up 29.5 percent.
   In November alone, the port handed a record 582,614 TEUs, 37 percent more than a year earlier. The port attributed the surge in traffic to “last-minute holiday cargo and shipments of after-Christmas products.”
   The November record topped the previous all-time monthly record set a month earlier in October.
   November’s inbound loaded containers — filled largely with Asian-made products including clothing, shoes and toys headed to shopping malls for holiday and after-Christmas sales — rose 37 percent to 295,717 TEUs. Outbound containers — filled largely with raw materials including recycled paper — climbed 21 percent to 99,436 TEUs, the best monthly export total since June 1997. The number of empty containers — nearly all headed overseas to be refilled with products — increased 49 percent to 187,461 TEUs in November.