Import, Export Volume Up at Port of Long Beach

Exports and imports rose sharply in January at Long Beach, the nation’s busiest port, as U.S. retailers raced to prepare for spring sales and Asia’s rebounding economies clamored for more American raw materials to prime their resurgent manufacturing sectors, port officials said Tuesday.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Payless ShoeSource Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. were especially instrumental in last month’s 17% increase in import volume over January 1998, with shoes among the top products fueling the upward march.

“Footwear shippers are having a particularly strong year so far,” said Hal Hilliard, marketing manager at the Port of Long Beach.

Payless is the port’s No. 2 importer behind Wal-Mart, and January tends to be a busy import month for shoe retailers as they prepare for their spring sales season.

“One of the peak times for the footwear industry is springtime and Easter,” said Jerry Ball, manager of international transportation for Topeka, Kan.-based Payless. Ball would not comment on the volume of shoes the company plans to import.

Appliances, electronic equipment and home furnishings also took up a large share of space inside the roughly 169,400 import cargo containers the port took in last month. That figure represents a year-over-year increase of nearly 25,000 of the 20-foot metal shipping containers the port uses to measure its cargo volumes.

“We’re very upbeat about January around here,” Hilliard said.

Hilliard said many retailers are trying to get an early jump on their inventories this year because they fear that a new federal law, which takes effect May 1, could spark an increase in overseas shipping costs.

Currently, contracts between container ship operators and importers are put on file with the Federal Maritime Commission for public scrutiny. But under the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 1998, which was seen as an effort to open competition, such filings will no longer be mandatory and contracts can be kept confidential and not available for competitors’ perusal.

Many importers, Hilliard said, worry that shipping lines will see the law as a green light to raise shipping costs without the fear of being undercut by competitors.

Ball would not comment on whether the impending law has had any bearing on the company’s overseas orders. But Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., said most, if not all, importers are wary of the legislation.

“Shipping deregulation is a really big issue,” Kyser said. “You have a lot of small shippers who are concerned about what the impact is gong to be on them. It makes sense to ship more until you see how the whole thing is going to sort itself out.”

Meanwhile, increased shipments of wastepaper and cotton to Asia caused the port’s export volume last month to rise 7% over January 1998, Hilliard said. The increase means 5,254 more export containers left Long Beach last month than a year ago. Scrap metal was also a top mover among exports.

Although January is traditionally a peak month for cotton shipments, Hilliard said, wastepaper and scrap metal have no seasonal cycle. Higher export rates for those products, he said, are a signal that Asia’s battered economies are improving.

“We’ve been looking for this for the past couple of months,” he said, referring to the jump in raw material exports. “We’re hoping it’s going to continue.”

The Port of Los Angeles, No. 2 in the U.S., is expected to release its January statistics in the next several days. Typically, L.A.’s port figures track those of Long Beach.

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Trading Up

Boosted by retailers’ plans for spring sales and rebounding Asian economies, imports into the Port of Long Beach jumped 17% in January compared with a year ago, preliminary numbers show. Exports from the nation’s largest port climbed 7.2% last month compared with January 1998.

Imports In thousands of TEUs*

January**: 169,396 TEUs

Exports In thousands of TEUs*

January**: 77,674 TEUs

* Twenty-foot equivalent units, an industry measurement of volume.

** Preliminary figures

Source: Port of Long Beach

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* A DIP AT LAX: Cargo volume through LAX decreased slightly in 1998. C2