Canada’s largest seaport suffered a slight decline in import
volumes last month compared to the same month in 2012, but it wasn’t enough to
drag the port’s overall container numbers down into the red.
In recently released data, Port Metro Vancouver reported
importing 133,727 TEUs during January, a slight decline of 1.5 percent from the
135,748 TEUs shipped during January 2012. The number of full containers was
only down 0.5 percent for the month, but the number of empties declined from about
9,000 in January 2012 to 7,600 last month, a drop of almost 15 percent.
The news was much better when it came to exports, however:
92,238 total TEUs moved through Metro Vancouver during the month, a 5.8 percent
month-over-month increase from January 2012’s 87,162. Of the exports, 76,516
were full, which was actually a decline of a tenth of a percent compared with
January 2012. But the volume of empty TEU exports rose by 48.7 percent, from
10,576 to 15,723.
For January 2013 as a whole, Metro Vancouver saw 225,965
TEUs – 202,568 full and 23,397 empty – move through its terminals, a 1.4
increase from January 2012’s 222,910 TEUs.
