Although the growth trend underway in the period has finally stopped, falling from a rise of +52.6% recorded in last July compared to the same month in 2023 to an increase by +33.9% in August and then stopped in September when, with 828 thousand TEUs, containerized traffic was similar to that of September 2023, in the entire third quarter of 2024 the Californian port of Long Beach has nevertheless marked its New all-time high for quarterly container traffic having handled a total of 2.62 million TEUs, in growth of +25.6% over the July-September period last year.

The new quarterly peak was reached thanks to the historical records of full container volumes at unloading and empty containers, which amounted to 1.31 million TEUs (+30.2%) and 1.02 million TEUs (+27.4%). The flow of containers full at embarkation, although after six quarters of decrease an increase of +4.6% having been equal to 298 thousand TEUs, is much lower than the records set before the economic and financial crisis of 2008-2009 when the volumes of full containers in export were about +60% higher.

In the first nine months of this year, the Port of Long Beach handled a total of 6.92 million TEUs, with a Progression of +18.8% over the same period of 2023, of which 3.40 million full TEUs at landing (+23.4%), 874 thousand full TEUs at boarding (-10.8%) and 2.65 million empty TEUs (+26.6%).