By Gavin van Marle
02/03/2026
Despite a disappointing start to the year, with the new Port of Long Beach (POLB) chief executive, Noel Hacegaba, was confident that full-year 2026 volumes could near 2025’s record-breaking 9.9m teu.
Dr Hacegaba whp took over from Mario Cordero on 1 January, sat down with The Loadstar on the eve of this year’s TPM event in Long Beach and said that, notwithstanding the uncertainty around tariffs – “the only certainty is uncertainty” – structural trade factors would support volumes.
“I’m an optimist – I think 2026 is going to be another strong year. By that I think we’re going to eclipse the 9m teu mark. I think we’re going to end somewhere in the 9.4m-9.5m teu region, which is a conservative projection, but would still be one of our top five years.
“Despite all the uncertainty surrounding tariffs and Supreme Court decision, the sales-to-inventory ratio from January through December trended down, which to me a signals that inventory levels need to be replenished.
“I’ve been talking to shippers directly and they are all placing orders – there aren’t many cancellations to speak of – and I think shippers have learned from last year and saw how managing inventory led to their success, and I also think this year will see some tariff normalisation.
Dr Hacegaba spent a large part of his ‘state-of-the-port’ speech in January addressing the long-term capacity expansion of the second-busiest US gateway – the target is to double throughput by 2050.
However, according to Xeneta’s eeSea liner database, the annual capacity of Long Beach is 13.5m teu, and the port has outlined three key projects to increase that, and earmarked $3.2bn to fund them.
The majority of that, $2bn, is set for the Pier B on-dock rail facility that will take the port’s annual intermodal capacity of 1.7m teu to 4m teu.
“In 2019, China accounted for 70% of our business, today it is 60% and yet last year was a record-breaker for us because of the seismic shift to South-east Asia.
“When cargo is coming from South-east Asia vs China, it adds two-to-three days on the water, so we have to figure out how we’re going to make up for that – Pier B (which I call ‘Pier Beast’ because it’s so big and complex) is going to do that for us.
“Today the average time it takes to get a container from a ship onto a train is just under four days; with Pier B we’re gong to get that down to 24 hours,” he said.
On the UP-Norfolk Southern merger, Dr Hacegaba said the port was still studying the proposal and had yet to adopt a formal position, but “our view is anything that drives velocity, that enhances efficiency and predictability, and reliability is good for the system”.
“So we are looking at ways that this proposed merger could impact it. It could be a force multiplier with our Pier B project,” he added.
Meanwhile, POLB is also in exclusive negotiations with infrastructure investor Brookfield on the development of new container terminal, the proposed Metro Express at Pier S.
Brookfield is partnering with local operator MetroPorts to manage the facilty which would specifically target express container services of the sort pioneered by Matson, APL, and Zim, largely catering for local e-commerce cargo.
“Right now we are in the process of negotiating a long-term agreement with them. But the concept behind the terminal is that it will primarily service smaller ships, up to 9,000 teu.
“We are not talking about a huge footprint – it’s only about 100 acres – but it will be a 24/7 operation, and as soon as containers are discharged from a ship they’re being moved onto a truck and driven to nearby warehouses,” he said.
The facility will add another 1.8m teu capacity to Long Beach’s total.
The final project will see an indent in the quay of the K Line-Port America joint-venture terminal, ITS, filled in to create one quay line just over 1km long, and allow it to serve three ultra-large container vessels simultaneously.
“Filling in that slip is going to boost their yard capacity by 50%, which will give us another 1m-1.5m teu capacity – just that.”