Dive Brief:

• Import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports will likely be at near-peak levels this month, despite the bankruptcy and resulting slowdowns of troubled South Korean ocean shipper Hanjin Shipping, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released Monday by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

• Ports covered by Global Port Tracker handled 1.63 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units in July, the latest month for which after-the-fact numbers are available. That was up 3.2% from June and up 0.7% from July last year, according to the NRF. One TEU is one 20-foot-long cargo container or its equivalent.

• August is estimated at 1.67 million TEU, down 0.4% from last year, and is expected to have been the busiest month of the annual buildup to the holiday season. September is forecasted at 1.62 million TEU, down 0.2% from last year; October at 1.63 million TEU, up 5.3% from last year; November at 1.53 million TEU, up 3.8%; and December at 1.49 million TEU, up 3.6%. Those numbers should bring 2016 to a total of 18.6 million TEU, up an overall 1.8% from last year.

Dive Insight:

Bankruptcy troubles from Hanjin Shipping, the world's seventh-largest ocean shipping company by capacity, have driven up the costs of getting merchandise to stock shelves and retail warehouses. “There’s going to be exorbitant costs,” Peter Schneider, vice president of California-based T.G.S. Transportation, told the Wall Street Journal. “Everything is unraveling.” T.G.S. has some $7,000 in outstanding bills to Hanjin, which Schneider said he will likely write off, but added that smaller trucking companies that “had all their eggs in one basket with Hanjin... may go under."

Hanjin carries 7.8% of the U.S. market's trans-Pacific trade volume: Millions of dollars worth of merchandise could be delayed by the shipper's woes, some stuck in Asia and some at U.S. ports, as trucking companies and others avoid taking up the cargo for fear of not being paid, according to the NRF. 

Another trade group, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Federal Maritime Commission asking the federal government to step in to help smooth out the Hanjin situation. The letter also expressed hope that the South Korean government would work to clarify and speed up bankruptcy proceedings. 

There’s some light at the end of the tunnel: Freight from a Hanjin Shipping Co. vessel was unloaded at the Long Beach, CA port Monday, setting the stage for more of the embattled company's ships to dock. Alternative arrangements are being made to unload and shift the cargo in limbo, said NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said in a statement, adding that  "[R]etailers are working hard to make sure it ends up on store shelves in time for the holidays.”