The two busiest ports on the US west coast, the Los Angeles and Long Beach, handled a total of 15.76 million TEU last year, a rise of 10.99 per cent over the previous year, when the two recorded a joint volume of 14.19 TEU.

Statistics from the two southern California ports show that Los Angeles recorded a 13.2 per cent increase in container throughput to 8.47 million TEU over 2005. Neighbouring Long Beach handled 7.29 million TEU in 2006, a year-on-year rise of 8.7 per cent.

The 2006 throughput at Los Angeles saw inbound loaded boxes rise more than 13 per cent to 4.41 million TEU compared to the previous year, while inbound loaded containers at Long Beach were up 11.2 per cent year on year at 3.72 million TEU.

Full containers exported from the Port of Los Angeles rose more than 21.3 per cent to 1.42 million last year. Of the total 3.98 million outbound boxes, 64.25 per cent were empty.

The Port of Long Beach handled a total of 2.28 million outbound empty containers, an increase of 6.4 per cent over 2005.