The Port of Los Angeles announced Tuesday that it will become the first port in the Western Hemisphere to handle more than one million TEUs in a month, setting a record.

This May has been the busiest month ever for the nation's busiest port. It handled 1,012,248 boxes in May, a 74 percent increase from May 2020, when COVID-19 was bringing global trade to a standstill.

In the first five months of this year, the total handling capacity was 4,451,445 TEU, an increase of 48.2 percent compared to the same period in 2020.

The Port of Long Beach and the South Carolina Port Authority also reported record times last week. The Georgia Port Authority announced that the port has grown for 10 consecutive months.

One item that stands out from the Port of Los Angeles data for May is the amount of empty containers. Due to strong demand from Asia, empty containers climbed to 366,448 TEUs, a jump of 114% from last year and the highest monthly volume ever handled at the port.

At the nearby Port of Long Beach, empty containers rose 80.7% to 327,135 TEU in May from a year earlier.

Import volumes at the Port of Los Angeles in May were also the highest ever at 535,714 TEU, up 75% from a year earlier, surpassing the previous record of 516,286 TEU set in August 2020. Shipment volume was stable, up 5.3% year on year to 109,886 TEU.

"Our trade gap has now widened to 4.9-to-1, which is the largest import/export gap we have ever seen," Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Gene Seroka said, "Our level of cargo management reflects our commitment to further improve our productivity, throughput and speed to new heights by working with our partners.

This is thanks to our longshore workers, truckers, terminal operators, shipping lines, railroads and other stakeholders being able to scale up to meet this unusual demand."

It is worth mentioning that according to the data of Zhejiang Port and Shipping Administration Center, Ningbo Zhoushan Port completed the cargo throughput of 509.43 million tons from January to May, up 13.15% year on year. Among them, the container throughput reached 13.238 million TEU, up 23.5 percent year on year.

In May, Ningbo Zhoushan Port completed 111.0728 million tons of cargo throughput, with a year-on-year growth of 6.7%; Container throughput reached 2.836,500 TEUs, up 16.5% year on year, and production and transportation maintained steady growth.