BEIJING: It’s been five years since Shanghai toppled Singapore for the No. 1 spot in the JOC Top 50 container port rankings, and Shanghai firmly led with a 1.4 million-TEU spread in the 2014 results. Singapore, the Southeast Asia transshipment hub, had previously led the rankings for five years after dethroning Hong Kong in 2005. Here are four other things you need to know about this year’s rankings.
The Middle East’s largest container port, Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates, was the ninth-largest port, handling 15.3 million TEUs in 2014. Jebel Ali is the flagship facility of parent DP World, a global terminal operator that handled 60 million TEUs in 2014 and 30.6 million TEUs in the first half of this year.
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 15.2 million TEUs, more than a million TEUs ahead of Tianjin, China.
Rotterdam, Europe’s largest container port, Rotterdam, was the 11th-largest port in 2014,, with 12.3 million TEUs. The new APM terminal and the new Rotterdam World Gateway Terminal at Maasvlakte 2 are now operational.
Five U.S. ports are ranked in the Top 50, together handling 27.7 million TEUs in 2014. In context, that volume would fall between the throughput of second-ranked Singapore and third-ranked Shenzhen. Besides Los Angeles and Long Beach with a combined 15.2 million TEUs, there’s New York-New Jersey, with 5.8 million TEUs; the Seattle-Tacoma Northwest Seaport Alliance, 3.43 million TEUs; and Savannah, 3.35 million TEUs. The top three U.S. ports below the Top 50 cutoff were Oakland, Virginia and Houston.
