Do you know that? History of world’s busiest ports.

This post presents a brief history of the world’s busiest seaports. With the rise of shipping general cargo by means of containers (we have covered that in greater detail here), a number of container terminals have been developed around the world. Who is the leader and how much has this part of the industry changed over the years?

For many years, Rotterdam, situated in the Rhine-Meuse delta at the North Sea, had scored best for TEUs (a capacity unit equivalent of a 20-foot container) processed. Between 1962 and 1986, the Dutch port was the world’s busiest facility. Although it is still Europe’s largest port today, it is “merely” the 11^th biggest port in the world.

In the late 1980s, Rotterdam was overtaken by Asian ports, first by Singapore and then Shanghai and Hong Kong. Until 2009, Singapore had led the pack, but Shanghai overtook it in 2010. In 2017 alone, the latter handled more than 40 million TEUs. With more than 33 million TEUs, Singapore was the second. Further positions are occupied by Asian ports, with the said Rotterdam port handling ‘mere’ 13 million TEUs and being world’s 20^th busiest port. For comparison, Gdańsk, Poland’s largest port and the second largest port on the Baltic Sea, has reached 1.6 million TEUs.

Due to the region’s outstanding growth for the past 20 years, the Asian ports have dominated the rank and this is not going to change anytime soon. Let’s hope that Gdańsk and Gdynia will see a steady growth and improve their positions, too.