Trade intelligence company Zepol Corp. has reported that U.S. import shipment volume for June, measured in TEUs, decreased 4.57% from May and 7.38% from June 2010. The total number of shipments also decreased 4.79% from May and more than 6% from June 2010. Year to date, total TEUs are up 4.80% this year over last year.

The overall June decrease was largely caused by the nearly 6% decrease in incoming shipments from Asia. China played a large part in this, with a 5.82% decrease in shipments. Japan, however, showed a 2.53% increase in incoming shipments. Similar to Asia, Central America and South America exhibited a 4.85% and 7.56% decrease, respectively, while Europe looked promising with a slight import decrease of only 0.14%.

The Pacific, South Atlantic, and Mid Atlantic ports in the U.S. each showed a decrease of 6.18%, 2.93%, and 5.34%, respectively, of incoming shipments. The ports in California ended their two-month streak of rising imports and posted an 8% decrease when compared to June 2010.

Zepol’s data is derived from Bills of Lading entered into the Automated Manifest System. This information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne containerized goods. This is the earliest indicator for trade data available for the previous month’s import activity. The data excludes shipments from empty containers, excludes shipments labeled as freight remaining on board, and may contain other data anomalies.