By Joshua Burd
The Port of New York and New Jersey saw record container volume in 2022, making it the second-busiest U.S. shipping hub and signaling continued demand for area warehouse space.
That’s according to new research by Cushman & Wakefield, which noted that the port handled nearly 9.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, last year, marking a 5.7 percent increase from 2021. The uptick helped New York and New Jersey rise above the Port of Long Beach to become the nation’s second-busiest seaport, as congestion and labor disputes at West Coast ports have motivated shippers to divert more U.S.-bound cargo to the East Coast.
C&W added that the Port of New York and New Jersey is now behind only the Port of Los Angeles, where TEU volume fell 7.2 percent from 2021. That bodes well for the industrial submarkets surrounding Port Newark-Elizabeth, where rents have surged in recent years.
“The shift of cargo from the West Coast to the East Coast ports is expected to have sticking power, partly because retailers and manufacturers have invested in new facilities or altered their shipping practices to favor other ports to hedge their bets against future supply chain issues,” John Obeid, C&W’s senior research manager in New Jersey, wrote in the report. “Looking ahead, 2023 container volumes are anticipated to return to more normalized levels, which was exhibited during the final four months of 2022.”
According to the report, vacancy in what C&W called the Greater Port Region rose 3.6 percent in 2022 due to the delivery of new space. That includes the addition of nearly 845,000 square feet in Linden and a 358,586-square-foot new completion in Belleville.
Still, preleasing activity and tenant demand persisted throughout the year, resulting in 2.4 million square feet of positive net absorption, C&W said. New construction delivery has led to record asking rent increases, which swelled 64.5 percent year over year to a new high of $19.34 per square foot.
Obeid’s report also noted that loaded imports at the Port of New York and New Jersey grew 4.7 percent year over year, to 4.8 million TEUs. That made it one of only two ports to process more than 4.5 million TEUs of loaded import cargo volume.