The Hong Kong port’s container throughput in August reached 15.6mn TEUs since January this year, a rise of 6.3% over the first eight months last year. The growth trend has been steady since March and, barring an unforeseen drop in the coming months, throughput growth at the Hong Kong port should reach over 5% by the end of the year. In 2005, throughput at the Hong Kong port reached 22.6mn TEUs, at a growth of 2.8%.

Meanwhile, an initial wave of holiday season shipments in August boosted throughput at the US port of Long Beach, a gateway for Asian shipments to the US, to a 13.6% increase.

Hong Kong’s Kwai Tsing container terminal operators, which handle 65% of the port’s total throughput, reported high double-digit growth in international transhipment traffic of 15.5% in August. The CTOs also are seeing an improvement in local traffic, the so-called “gate-in” containers brought by trucks to the terminals, from March to August, of some 2 to 3%. Overall, the CTOs in Kwai Tsing handled 1.5mn TEUs in August, a rise of 13.6% over Aug 2005. In Jan-Aug 2006, the terminals handled 10.4mn TEUs to date, at a growth rate of 9.9%.

In the stream and other berths, throughput by ocean vessels for Jan-Aug this year was 1.7mn TEUs (down by 14.7%) and by river cargo vessels, 3.6mn TEUs (up by 8.2%).

Air cargo throughput at the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) maintained its upward trend in August 2006, growing 3.4% over the same month last year, to 292,000 tonnes. Increases were also recorded for passengers with an 8.7% rise for August when a total of 4.1mn passengers passed through the HKIA. Correspondingly, aircraft movements grew also by 3.3% to 23,800 movements in August.