While global supply chain challenges are leaving some ports with massive backlogs, threatening a shortage of goods for the holiday season, at the Port of New York and New Jersey, a steady flow of holiday and winter goods has been arriving since May. 

At the Port of New York and New Jersey, container ships and their cargo moved swiftly and efficiently throughout the pandemic to keep the region supplied with food, medicine, personal protective equipment, and stock for store shelves along the Northeast. For the past 13 months, despite record-setting cargo activity, container ships waiting for a spot to dock at the Port of New York and New Jersey have numbered a handful at the most, with the wait time for each ship averaging less than two days.

 While the port typically gets a reprieve during the last three months of the year, once shipments of holiday goods subside, the demand fueled by the pandemic is expected to keep cargo activity at numbers close to last year’s highs. Since mid-2020, the port has seen a growth rate that was not predicted to occur until 2026-2027, an estimate based on several factors, including regional population growth. 

 In August 2021, the third-busiest month since the port began tracking cargo activity, the port moved more than 780,000 TEUs. It also saw the arrival of the 16,000 TEU-capacity container ship CMA CGM JULES VERNE, which moved more than 11,000 of those units at the port, setting a record for the largest amount of cargo to be unloaded and loaded from a single vessel at the seaport. Since April, ocean carriers have added five new services to the port and amended three existing routes to meet demand, including a new weekly service between Taipei and the U.S. East Coast that calls on the port’s Staten Island facility, Global Container Terminal’s GCT New York. 

 To read more about the Port of New York and New Jersey’s unprecedented cargo activity, visit the Port Authority Blog.