Plans for a $1bn container port to be built at Punta Colonet on Mexico's west coast have been unveiled by Marine Terminals Corp, a California holding company owned by Evergreen, Yang Ming, Hanjin and China Shipping.

The aim is to create an alternative to the congested southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Walter Romanowski, Marine Terminals' executive vice-president for container operations, said the firm wanted to build a complex of berths, warehouses and cranes at Punta Colonet to handle some 1m teu by 2012 - about one-seventh of LA's current volume.

Marine Terminals also hopes to construct a new rail line to carry containers from the proposed Mexican port to California's Imperial Valley.

Container traffic from China is growing at 15% per year with Los Angeles and Long Beach becoming the main point of entry into the US, with some 11.3m teu arriving last year.

Congestion has mounted at the ports due to a variety of problems, not least the fact that the ports' gates are open only eight hours per day, five days per week due to the financial constraints of manning them around the clock, seven days a week.

Problems at Los Angeles and Long Beach were compounded by the lack of rail and trucking facilities, as well as insufficient gangs of longshoremen to unload the containers from the ships and move them through the terminals.