Volume at North America West Coast (NAWC) ports has seen a slowdown in the second quarter after recording unprecedented growth in the past quarters due to a surge in shipping, mostly from Asia.
Sea-Intelligence said in a new analysis that on a year-on-year basis, North America West Coast laden inbound volumes "contracted heavily" in the second half of 2021, but the annualised growth over 2019 shows that this is more an "artefact" of strong second half 2020 growth.
"Rather, what we have seen is that when compared to 2019, there has been continued growth since July 2020, although it has slowed from the highs of 20% in 2020-2H, to mostly in the 0-5% range through the second-half 2021," the maritime analyst added.
Sea-Intel analysed the container handling statistics for the major North America West Coast ports including Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Prince Rupert, Vancouver, and Seattle/Tacoma to see the volume growth in the second quarter of 2022.
In 2022, the year-on-year change has been negative in 4 out of the 6 months, although the June 2022 growth was 4.0%.
Sea-Intel noted that on an annualised basis, however, the growth rate has largely been under 6% since the second half of 2021, although there was a sharp increase to 14.2% in March 2022.
"In the last few months, however, the annualised growth rate has slightly level-shifted upwards slightly to 4%-8%, although the overall trend in 2022-Q2 has been downwards," said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.
"Another point of note is that carriers are continuing to prioritise empty container exports out of North America West Coast," he added.
