Container growth puts ports under pressure

The London-based shipping consultancy, Drewry, has forecast that average global container port demand growth will be 4.5% per annum through to 2019.

Fingering your calculator, this would work out to be an additional 168 million TEU of port traffic. And it would bring the global traffic total to nearly 850 million TEU.

With Asia accounting for over 60% of the forecast global demand growth, Drewry noted that many of the top ports in the region are enjoying significant booms in cargo.

It also reported that, at the same time, the deployment of ultra-large container ships and the formation of new mega-alliances are adding to these capacity pressures on global/international terminal operators.