Top-15 container ports in the European Union in Q3, 2023

PortEconomics presents the list of the top 15 #container #ports in the #European #Union, prepared by PortEconomics member Theo Nottteboom.

The table shows the container throughput in TEU for the first nine months of 2022 (unless mentioned otherwise) and the growth in 2021.

While the ranking might be a mere distraction from other major port-related themes such as sustainability, energy transition and supply chain resilience, the table provides more insight into the EU container port landscape. The year 2021 brought strong growth in the lower half of the top 15 ranking and moderate growth in most of the top-ranked ports.

However, in the first three quarters of 2022 only a few ports can present significant growth, i.e. Baltic hub Gdansk and Italian transshipment hub Gioia Tauro. The top 6 EU ports all recorded moderate or significant traffic losses.

Thus, the economic slowdown and port congestion issues are reflected in the handled container volumes. If these growth rates persist for the remaining part of 2022, four ports in the EU top 15 will end up with a total container throughput in 2022 that will be below the TEU handled in the pre-crisis year 2019, i.e., Hamburg, Piraeus, Algeciras, and Genoa (not the case when combined with the volumes of Vado Ligure/Savona).

A discussion on the 2021 figures has been included in the online version of the book ‘Port Economics, Management and Policy’ – you might read more here.