Back by popular demand, Zepol's lastest report highlights trade activity for the top 20 U.S. ports. The annual report provides detailed import information for each port and compares trends to the previous year as well as sheds light upon potential future developments.

Four Key Insights Found in the Report:

1. The top port in the U.S. by a landslide, the Port of Los Angeles, surpassed all other ports by over 1 million TEUs (twenty-foot-containers) and over 500,000 shipments.
   
2. Based on TEU volume, 11 of the top 20 ports posted positive import growth from 2011 to 2012.
3. The Port of Tacoma saw the greatest growth in 2012, with a 29% increase in inbound TEUs from 2011. 
4. The top 20 ports account for 97% of all TEU imports into the United States.

"Zepol’s latest Port Report provides insights for transportation companies, importers and exporters, steamship lines, and suppliers," says Zepol’s CEO Paul Rasmussen. "More recently, trade professionals have a growing need to know what’s happening at the ports and this report gives great detail on last year's port activity from a performance standpoint and a good picture of the movement of goods in the United States in 2012."

Entering the conference is a whirlwind; a sea of smiling faces surrounds you, all ready to learn the latest and greatest updates from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. You have never seen so many responsible adults eager to comply. Seminar after seminar, the knowledge flows more freely than the open bar.

Our team was posted up at the exhibit hall with our beautiful booth glowing a proud orange and blue. We welcomed our customers and guests with gifts of sunglasses, mints, and fancy clicky pens, there was even a raffle for a much-coveted iPad. The attendees lost all sense of time and space when shown how to search through 115 million bills of lading in a couple clicks with our TradeIQ Import and TradeIQ Export products.

The conference was a blast, but after three days of chatting, eating, learning, and chatting and eating, we were ready to enjoy some open air and a little silence. With a nice break on Wednesday, we had two options for leisure: 1. Golf, or 2. Take the world’s largest rotating tramcar up 6,000 ft. overlooking the breathtaking Coachella Valley…I think you know where this is going. The tramcar it was! Nothing shuts you up faster than hanging from a wavering cable-car 1000 ft. in the air, it was a great way to end the trip.

Needless to say, we had an amazing time at NCBFAA in 2013. Will we see you in Las Vegas in 2014?

See some glamour shots from the Zepol team below (Mt. San Jacinto State Park).      

Zepol welcomes this guest blog entry from Transport Intelligence, a market intelligence firm for the transport and logistics industry.

Better working conditions and a pay increase are behind a two-week strike at the port of Hong Kong. However, it appears Li Ka-shing, who controls half of the capacity at Hong Kong and almost as much at neighboring Shenzhen/Yantian is not budging on concessions to port workers. Meanwhile, cargo is reportedly piling up at the port. According to the Hong Kong Association of Freight Forwarding and Logistics, approximately 120,000 TEUs have accumulated at the port since the strike began.

How is the strike affecting the U.S. ports? Based on Zepol's most recent data, March shipments from the port of Hong Kong were down year-over-year by 18.6%. However, before alarms are sounded, one needs to take note the Chinese New Year holiday in February may also be attributing to this decline – manufacturers probably did not reopen businesses until late February at best which would account for lower shipments in March. In fact, U.S. import shipment totals for other Asian ports are low as well as noted on the chart below:

For the two largest U.S. ports, it appears that March shipments were mixed. A year-over-year 4% increase in import shipments was noted for Los Angeles; however, an almost 47% year-over-year decline in shipments from Hong Kong was noted for the port of Long Beach. Some of this sharp decline for Long Beach may indeed be attributed to the strike. April shipment data will probably be more telling for potential adverse effects U.S. ports may have suffered due to the Hong Kong strike.

U.S. imports for March decreased by 15% from February and by 12.5% from March of last year. The drop is mainly due to Chinese factories closing their doors during the Chinese New Year. Even though U.S. imports have now decreased for two consecutive months, quarter one of this year is still slightly above last year, by 0.11%.

You can read more about March's imports in our Press Release Here.

  Methodology:
Zepol’s data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne vessel goods. This is the earliest indicator for trade data available for the previous month’s import activity. The data excludes shipments from empty containers, excludes shipments labeled as Freight Remaining on Board (FROB), and may contain other data anomalies.