In April, the port handled 179,370 TEU, an increase of 9,726 units when compared with April 2012. Export TEU tallied 96,261 and import TEU were 83,109, an increase of 6.1 and 5.3 percent, respectively.
“Our year-to-date TEU volume is up 6.1 percent, a difference of nearly 40,000 TEUs,” said Rodney W. Oliver, the Virginia Port Authority’s interim executive director. “Our rail containers in April were up 16.4 percent when compared with last April and on a year-to-date level, rail is more than 14 percent ahead of where it was at this time last year. Customers are taking advantage of our strong rail connections and our first-in and last-out vessel calls.”
Also in April:
• April was the sixth consecutive month of double-digit rail growth at the Port of Virginia; the average increase for the six-month period is 19.6 percent.
• Combined, the first for months of 2013 represent the second best start to a calendar year for TEU in the history of the port. The TEU volume handled in that period was just 10,518 units short of 2008’s record-setting mark of 697,562 TEU.