News
The world’s top five container ports all enjoyed double-digit growth year on year in container throughput in the first half of 2010 (January-June), proving they were no longer under the influence of the global financial crisis that began in September 2008.
In particular, Shanghai came in second place but came close to outrun Singapore, the busiest container port in the world, by a very small margin of slightly over 200,000 TEUs.
If container lifting at the Chinese ports remains as massive, it would take over the lead.
Like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Busan also marked all time highs, exceeding their previous records registered in the corresponding period of fiscal 2008.
In the first half of 2010, Singapore handled 14.063 million TEUs of containers, an increase of 14.3 percent from a year earlier, defending its title as the leading container port in the world.
From the January-June period of 2008, however, the volume was down 6.4 percent, meaning that it had not yet regained what it was before the global financial turmoil occurred.
Ranked second place was Shanghai, which processed a record high of 13.856 million TEUs, which represented an improvement of 0.3 percent from the first half of 2008.
The difference in container throughput between Singapore and Shanghai was just 207,000 TEUs.
If Shanghai continues to perform as briskly, it would exceed Singapore on an annual scale in 2010.
Hong Kong finished in second place, recording a double-digit increase of 16.1 percent in box lifting to 11.436 million TEUs.
Hong Kong was followed by Shenzhen, which processed 10.4264 million TEUs, up 29.7 percent, the largest year-on-year growth among the top five.
Volume of containerized shipments handled at Shenzhen in the six months in question was even 2.3 percent greater that what it was two years ago.
Busan gained an improvement of more than 20 percent, handling 6.986 million TEUs, up 24.1 percent.
The record-high throughput was 1.7 percent higher than the first half of 2008.
