Port and city officials have called for expediting planned upgrades at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to stave off the threat of losing cargo traffic when the $5.25bn Panama Canal expansion is completed next year.

With a tentative contract deal reached with East Coast and Gulf Coast dockworkers - though a key West Coast agreement remains unsettled - import cargo volume at the nation's major retail container ports is expected to increase 8.5 percent in February over the same month last year, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

The G6 Alliance, a group of six ocean carriers sharing vessel space in the Asia-to-Europe container trades, is expanding its reach to include the route from Asia to the East Coast of North America.

GENCO ATC, the product of a merger in 2010 between GENCO and ATC Technology Corp., is being rebranded under the GENCO name alone.

U.S. vessel imports rose a slight 1.2 percent in 2012 over the year before. This was a total of over 17.6 million TEUs imported, or roughly 200,000 more containers than in 2011. Slow and steady growth seems to be the consistent pattern for the year as import volume still has not returned to 2007 or 2008 levels. Zepol has seen a large spike from 2009 to 2010 and then a plateau-like trend for the past three years, although 2012 was an especially unique year for U.S. imports.