Top 15 container ports in Europe in 2019: TEU volumes and growth rates

By Theo Notteboom

The cargo volume handled remains a key performance indicator for ports. While also other indicators related to logistics performance, sustainability, innovation and economic impact are gaining ground, it remains relevant to observe how cargo volumes have evolved over time. The table shows the top 15 container ports in the European Union in 2019 based on container throughput expressed in TEU. It also includes container growth figures compared to 2018 and pre-crisis year 2007. The final TEU figures for Felixstowe were not available at the time of writing, while the annual volumes for Genoa and Bremerhaven are based on the growth for the first ten months of 2019.

What do the figures reveal?

Top 15: y-o-y increase in container traffic of 2.8% in 2019

Last year, the top 15 ports recorded a growth of 2.8%. This is almost 2 percentage points lower than the 4.7% growth in 2018 and 4.6% in 2017. In 2015 the top 15 ports saw a small traffic decline of 1.6% compared to 2014. In 2016 they recorded a modest growth of 2.1%.

Top 15: 29% increase in container traffic between 2007 and 2019

The top 15 ports combined saw a 29% increase in container traffic compared to pre-crisis year 2007. Three of the 15 ports still recorded container volumes in 2019 below the 2007 figures: transhipment hub Gioia Tauro and German ports Hamburg and Bremerhaven. Piraeus and Gdansk are clear outliers on the positive side: Gdansk handled 20 times its 2007 volume in 2019, while Piraeus saw a more than threefold increase between 2007 and 2019.

Shake-up at the top: the rise of Med ports

The year 2019 brought another double digit growth in Piraeus. The Greek port continues to climb the rankings by gaining two places to occupy the 4th position in 2019. Piraeus was not even in the top 15 in 2007. The Greek port jumped over Valencia and Algeciras in the ranking, despite healthy growth in these Spanish ports. Mediterranean transhipment hub Marsaxlokk (Malta) and Bremerhaven saw a double-digit decline in box volumes. As a result, Bremerhaven jumped from 4th to the 7th position, while Marsaxlokk now occupies the 11th spot. It is the first time ever that a Med port joins the top 4 container ports. Since the start of containerisation in Europe in the late 1960s, the top 4 featured only ports of the so-called Hamburg-Le Havre range.

The top 3 remains unchanged

The position of the top three European container ports (i.e. Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg) remains undisputed. Both Rotterdam and Antwerp stay on the growth paths of the past years, although Rotterdam’s growth slowed down to reach 2.1% while Antwerp’s box traffic rose by an impressive 6.8%. Hamburg was lagging behind in the past years but showed a healthy growth of 6.1% in 2019. Changes in the liner service schedules of alliances (partly at the expense of Bremerhaven) and the Elbe deepening and widening program supported Hamburg’s revival. However, Hamburg’s box volume is still 6.4% below its record year 2007, a strong deviation from the growth patterns observed in the two largest European ports (+ 45% for Antwerp and +37.2% for Rotterdam). The gap between Rotterdam and Antwerp now amounts to 3 million TEU, while Antwerp handles 2.6 million TEU more than Hamburg. In other words, the throughput gap between no. 1 Rotterdam and no. 3 Hamburg is nearly equal to the entire volume of no. 4 Piraeus. The top 3 ports in Europe handled more than 35.9 million TEU in 2019 (+4.6%) or 45.4% of the combined throughput of all top 15 ports.

The rise of Baltic port Gdansk

Only few changes took place when it comes to the ports that made it to the top 15. Gdansk in Poland entered the top 15 thanks to a 6.4% growth after impressive year-on-year growth figures of more than 23% in 2018 and 21.6% in 2017. Gdansk is the second Baltic port in the top 15, ranked just behind St-Petersburg. Southampton was pushed out of the top 15 in 2019. Southampton, London, Zeebrugge, Sines, La Spezia and Marseille all handled between 1.4 and 2 million TEU in 2019 and thus have the potential to join the top 15 in the future. Le Havre recorded a modest traffic decline, but still managed to climb one position in the ranking. Also Barcelona saw a modest traffic decline, but managed to hold on to its position as the 9th biggest container port in Europe. Three years ago, the port was still at the 13th position.

Transhipment vs. gateway cargo as drivers of TEU growth

It should be noted that a large part of the growth observed in the top Med ports is related to the sea-sea transhipment business: Piraeus and Algeciras are almost pure transhipment hubs in the Med, while Valencia and Barcelona combine significant transhipment flows with gateway cargo to the (mainly Spanish) hinterland. Most north-European ports in the ranking combine transhipment flows and import/export cargo with the sea-sea transhipment share in total container throughput ranging between 25% and 45%. Felixstowe, Genoa and St-Petersburg are almost pure gateway ports with a strong hinterland orientation. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the Moroccan transhipment port of Tanger Med handled nearly 4.8 million TEU in 2019 (a staggering +38% compared to 2018). As new container terminal capacity became operational in 2019, Tanger Med more than ever challenges the European hubs around the Straits of Gibraltar (such as Algeciras, Valencia and Sines), but also the hubs in the more central part of the Med, such as Gioia Tauro, Marsaxlokk and Cagliari.