There will be no change in the world’s top container port rankings for 2009, despite stunning falls in throughput growth across the region.
Singapore has managed to fend off a challenge to its world’s busiest container port title for another year but the port of Shanghai is so close on its heels there is little daylight between the two giant Asian shipping hubs.
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said today that container throughput in the city-state reached 25.9 million TEU last year, a 13.5 percent decline from 29.9 million boxes handled in 2008.
Shanghai was set to pass the Southeast Asian port until the trade slowdown intervened and turned its surge into a slump. The city’s port authority said an unofficial estimate of Shanghai’s container throughput for last year was 24 million boxes, down 14.2 percent on last year’s 28 million TEUs.
The slowdown in container traffic passing through the world’s top two ports last year was dramatic, and the slump in trade at the two main Pearl River Delta ports of Hong Kong and Shenzhen was just as shocking.
Neither port’s official numbers are out yet, but we have it on good authority that Hong Kong will record a throughput of 21 million TEUs for 2009, down 13.5 percent.
Across the fence at Shenzhen it will be even worse. Figures to be released soon will show container throughput at the port falling almost 15 percent year on year to 18.2 million boxes.
As the mainland’s premier manufacturing region, Pearl River Delta factories were hit hard by vanishing export orders, and when the major markets in the US and Europe melted down, the containers being exported via the ports slowed to a trickle. Okay, a million-box-a-month trickle, but in this part of the world that is slow going.
So Singapore will enjoy its place at the top of the lot for another year, but after 2010 the Chinese ports will begin to slide past. Both Singapore and Hong Kong will drop down the rankings and we reckon they will fall out of the top 10 altogether well before this decade is out.