Containerized Imports Fall Nearly 3% in October

Zepol Corp., a trade intelligence company, reports that import shipment volume for October, measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), decreased 2.72% from September and increased 12.84% over October 2009. The total number of shipments also fell 2.72% from September and rose 10.23% over last October.

Zepol Shipments and TEU Trend
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Year to date, total import shipments are up 14.21% over 2009 and down 2.38% from 2008. Year to date TEUs show similar numbers, up 16.17% over 2009 and down 0.23% from 2008. These numbers indicate that individual shipments are larger compared to previous years.

Total shipments from Asia are down 4.53% from September and this is reflected in the statistics for U.S. Port regions. Pacific ports were down 6.55%, while East Coast ports are up 3.29% and Gulf ports are up 0.71% in terms of total TEUs.

While total volume is down, two steamship lines, Maersk and CMA, saw increases over September for total TEUs. The rest of the top ten carriers had their volumes to the United States shrink for the same time frame.

Zepol’s data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into the Automated Manifest System. This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne containerized goods. This is the earliest indicator for trade data available for the previous month’s import activity. The data includes shipments from empty containers, may overstate totals from transshipments, and may contain other data anomalies.