Top 50 Container Ports

The Port of Shanghai was the busiest container port in the world in 2011, handling 31.7 million 20-foot-equivalent container units, more than double the 14 million TEUs moving through the largest U.S. port complex, Los Angeles-Long Beach; the 13 million TEUs of the Middle East’s top-ranked Jebel Ali in Dubai; and the 11.9 million TEUs of Europe’s top-ranked Rotterdam. Joining Shanghai on The Journal of Commerce annual ranking  of the Top 50 World Container Ports, were another dozen Chinese ports, including Hong Kong. All told, the Chinese ports accounted for 40.7 percent of the 397 million TEUs of cargo moving through the Top 50. Just 29.8 percent of the cargo moving through the Top 50 ports came from outside Asia-Australasia. Ports in Asia and Australasia contributed 70.5 percent of all throughput among the Top 50. China trade was definitely hopping in the Year of the Hare. What will 2012 — the Year of the Dragon — deliver? And what’s ahead for 2013, the Year of the Snake?