Shanghai becomes first boxport to handle more than 40m teu in a year

Shanghai has become the first port in the world to surpass 40m teu in a calendar year.

“Handling a whopping daily average well in excess of 100,000 teu, the Chinese port is thus expected to have handled a total volume of some 40.2m teu in the calendar year 2017, a year-on-year growth of 8.3%,” the latest weekly report from Alphaliner states.

Shanghai’s very solid showing in 2017 has seen it increase the gap over second place Singapore.

Shanghai overhauled Singapore to become the world’s largest boxport at the start of the decade. Alphaliner estimates Singapore finished 2017 with a 33.7m teu total.

Shanghai is launching new terminals at its flagship Yangshan facility and it comes at an urgent time with carriers reporting congestion at the port. Maersk Line and MSC have recently decided to skip Shanghai on their AE-2/Swan service.

While Shanghai is number one in the box stakes, it ranks second in overall tonnage terms. The port of Ningbo-Zhoushan to the south of Shanghai became the first port in the world last year to handle 1bn tonnes in a calendar year.