Bruce Barnard, Special Correspondent | Sep 18, 2012 11:17AM EDT
Piraeus remained Cosco Pacific’s top performing container hub in August as traffic surged 53 percent from a year ago and grew 98.4 percent in the first eight months of 2012.
The Chinese group’s Greek unit handled 165,000 20-foot-equivalent units in August taking traffic since January to 1.39 million TEUs.
Piraeus, until recently Europe’s most strike-bound port, was significantly ahead of Cosco’s second-ranked Tianjin International Container Terminal, which boosted August traffic by 34.7 percent to 110,800 TEUs.
The two-berth Greek terminal, for which Cosco Pacific paid around $5 billion for a 30-year concession in late 2009, also outperformed the company’s three other foreign container units.
Traffic at the Antwerp Gateway terminal, in which Cosco has a 20 percent stake, declined 20.6 percent in August to 82,400 TEUs. The Suez Canal Container Terminal, also 20 percent owned by Cosco, was down 11.8 percent at 245,400 TEUs.
The Cosco-PSA terminal in Singapore boosted traffic by 4.9 percent in August to 100,900 TEUs.
Cosco Pacific’s total throughput climbed 8.4 percent in August to 4.89 million TEUs and reached 36.5 million TEUs for the first eight months of the year, a 10 percent increase on the same period in 2011.
Contact Bruce Barnard at brucebarnard47@hotmail.com.