Container volumes across Europe ended the year on a high note with estimates for November 2010 reaching just over 3 million 20-foot equivalent units of containers and for 2011 growth in the high single digits, according to the Global Port Tracker.

Volume increased nearly 10 percent over the same month the previous year, said Hackett Associates and the Bremen Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics in their North Europe Trade Outlook, released Monday.

These figures, for all deep-sea European trade excluding transshipments and empties, include an estimated 1.73 million imported TEUs and 1.29 million exported TEUs, increases of 12.6 percent and 6.2 percent respectively compared to November 2009.

Import and export volumes are expected to grow through the six months of the short-term forecast with double-digit growth in exports for January and in imports for February. The forecast for 2010 of 21.12 million imported TEUs remains unchanged from previous Port Tracker forecasts and represents a 13.8 percent increase over 2009.

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