Despite cargo volumes at most of the West Coast ports turning decidedly weak over the past several months, one port has numbers to boast about. Unfortunately for United States West Coast ports, it happens to be the Port of Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Canada.
The port, located about 500 miles north of Vancouver, Canada and which opened it first major container terminal just four years ago, handled a total of 46,433 TEUs In July, a 20.3 percent increase over July 2010.
On the import side, the Prince Rupert Port Authority reported handling a total of 26,044 loaded inbound TEUs in July, a sizable 18 percent increase over the year-ago period.
Even more significant were the port's export numbers for the month. The port handled a total of 10,543 loaded outbound TEUs in July, a massive 94.5 percent increase over the same month last year.
In May, the port added two new services – one by China Ocean Shipping Co. and one by Hanjin – to bring the total number of services calling at the port's Prince Rupert Container Terminal to four.
While the calendar year total of 198,217 TEUs handled only puts the port up 1 percent over the first seven months of 2010, the port's loaded TEU volumes for the January to July period are up a solid 16.5 percent over the same period last year.
