LONDON: China’s largest port is also the world’s largest, opening a 5.6 million-TEU gap over No. 2 Singapore in 2015.
Shanghai toppled Singapore for the No. 1 spot in the JOC Top 50 container port rankings six years ago and hasn’t looked back, extending its spread over the world’s second-largest container hub to 5.6 million twenty-foot-equivalent units in 2015.
Singapore, Southeast Asia’s dominant transshipment hub, previously led the rankings for five years after dethroning Hong Kong in 2005. With Shenzhen having a firm grasp as the world’s third-largest port, Hong Kong, just an hour south and struggling with high costs, slipped behind Ningbo-Zhoushan to fifth.
No. 6 Busan, South Korea, meanwhile, is closing the gap with Hong Kong.
Nine of the Top 10 world container ports, and 28 of the Top 50, are Asian ports.
The Middle East’s largest container port, Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates, again cracked the Top 10 as the ninth-largest port in terms of volume, handling 15.6 million TEUs in 2015. Jebel Ali is the flagship facility of parent DP World, a global terminal operator that handled 61.7 million TEUs worldwide in 2015.
Combined, the adjacent Southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the United States’ two largest, would rank 10th on the JOC Top 50, with nearly 15.4 million TEUs, more than 1.2 million TEUs ahead of Tianjin, China.
Rotterdam, Europe’s largest container port, was the 11th-largest port in 2015, handling 12.2 million TEUs.
Now that its Maasvlakte 2 terminal is operational, the port is partnering with Indonesian Port Corp.’s Penlindo I in a port development project to replicate Rotterdam in a new deep-sea port at Kuala Tanjung, located on an islet of reclaimed land near Medan in the Strait of Malacca.
Five U.S. Ports made the Top 50, together handling 29 million TEUs in 2015. In context, that aggregate volume would fall between the throughput of second-ranked Singapore and third-ranked Shenzhen. In addition to Los Angeles and Long Beach, New York-New Jersey, with 6.4 million TEUs; Savannah, 3.7 million; and The Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle-Tacoma, with 3.5 million made the list. The top three U.S. ports below the Top 50 cutoff and above 2 million TEUs in 2015 throughput were Virginia, Oakland, and Houston. The 28 Asian Ports on the Top 50 list matched the 0.9 percent year-over-year growth rate of the Top 50 Ports overall. Within Asia, the top 12 Ports in mainland China and Hong Kong altogether achieved 1.7 percent growth, although the remaining Asia Ports were collectively flat, inching down 0.1 percent from 2014.
In contrast, three ports in the Middle East increased 1.4 percent year-over-year, while 10 ports in Europe declined 1.5 percent. The nine ports in the Americas were 4.1 percent above their 2014 results. Carving out the Americas to the five U.S. ports alone, year-over-year growth in 2015 was 4.8 percent, certainly strengthened by year-end 2014 U.S. West Coast port congestion and the many ships anchored offshore that rolled cargo over into 2015 because of port production slowdowns during protracted longshore labor talks. Among regions, Asia led with a 72 percent share of 2015 volume among the Top 50 ports. European Ports held 13.2 percent, the Americas 9.6 percent, and the Middle East trailed with a 5.2 percent market share.
With its sheer port volumes and consumer goods production, mainland China is often a leading indicator.
The table to the left extracts the top 10 mainland China Ports, in 2015 versus 2014, and compares those ports in similar standing with their year-over-year first-half 2016 versus 2015 results. The takeaway from the first-half 2016 results of the top 10 mainland China ports, not including Hong Kong, is 1.5 percent year-over-year growth, significantly slowing from their 3.4 percent growth in all of 2015.
Source: Dailyshippingtimes.com
