Container port sector remains dynamic and profitable despite changes

Whilst it is generally agreed that future container demand growth will not be as strong as the boom periods of the 1990s and 2000s, global container port demand is still forecast to exceed 800m teu/year by 2017, growing by just over 5%/year.

To put this growth into context, the 186m teu which this growth represents is the equivalent of the entire throughput of all Chinese ports in 2012. Or to put it another way, it is more than the entire 2012 throughput of North America, Europe and the Middle East combined. This illustrates what a colossal industry the container port business has become – something that is often overlooked because it is geographically fragmented across nearly 1,300 terminals across the world and so the collective industry is somewhat under the radar.

Therefore even modest demand growth now generates huge absolute increases in volumes.