WASHINGTON: Cosco Shipping Ports (CSP) ended the year on a high note, with a 10.5% rise in December overall throughput to 8.4m teu, driven by stellar 72.1% growth at its overseas ports and a recovery into positive territory for all its reporting regions. Reflecting the gathering storm though, overall growth for the whole of 2016 was less spectacular, rising 5.1% to 95.1m teu. The slowing Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta regions saw negative growth, falling 2.1% and 3.0% to 24.7m teu and 18.5m teu respectively for the year. In December, the Bohai Rim Region saw throughput rise 3.7% to 2.7m teu while the slowly building Southeast Coast region grew by 9.8% to 403,800 teu.
The Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions saw more muted growth of 1.8% and 1.6% to 1.6m teu and 2.2m teu respectively. Notably, the declines at CSP’s Hong Kong terminals continues and after a brief blip the month before, ended the year on a negative note. Volumes at Cosco-HIT Terminal ell 8.3% to 116,800 teu and at Asia Container Terminal volumes were down 7.4% to 110,500 teu in December.
For the year, the respective falls were 14.7% and 13.1%. Meanwhile other terminals in the Pearl River Delta also barely kept pace over the year, with only the relatively new Guangzhou South China Oceangate Container Terminal registering 6.6% growth for the year to 4.8m teu. Growth at CSP’s overseas terminals spiked 72.1% to 1.4m teu, from three ports that were not included in the previous corresponding figures and added slightly over 500,000 boxes to the overall number.
