SIMIC

The backlog of vessels waiting outside Los Angeles has fallen from a record high of 109 to 20 and the port moved 876,611 TEUs in June in its best record in over 100 years.

"We're going box for box with the record that we set for the first half just last year. So the cargo keeps moving. And the efficiencies of getting that cargo from the ship to shore by rail and truck continues to improve," Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia".

"We reduced that backlog of ships since the beginning of the year, now we want to get that number to zero."

The increased efficiency is a contrast to the delays triggered by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

We've got to get the cargo picked up at the inland rail facilities by our importers much quicker than they've been doing thus far.

While improved, conditions have not returned to pre-Covid levels and more improvements are needed, in particular the delivery of goods inland after the vessels have unloaded, Mr Seroka said.

He said the trucker strike protesting California's new "gig worker" law at the Port of Oakland should not affect the improved pace set so far.

The easing bottlenecks on the West Coast come as container prices continue to fall from their pandemic records.

Port lockdowns and a shortage of containers in 2020 and 2021 contributed to skyrocketing leasing costs. But now there is an oversupply of containers and prices have been falling since September.

According to Drewry's recently published container leasing report, the global pool of shipping containers increased by 13 per cent to almost 50 million TEUs in 2021. There is now a surplus of 6 million TEU globally.