Source: Containerization International.

World Top 20 Container Ports, 2005 (in Million TEUs)

Container shipping indicates a high level of traffic concentration around the largest port facilities, the top ones being Pacific Asian ports. As export oriented economic development strategies took shape, containers handled in Pacific Asian ports, notably Chinese ports, surged. The top 20 container ports account for more that half of the global container traffic. There is also an emerging geography of container ports where there is a specialization between container ports as gateways and container ports as hubs. Gateway ports command the access of large manufacturing or market regions. Shanghai and Rotterdam are notable examples. Hub ports (or offshore hubs) act as intermediary locations where containers are transshipped between different segments of the global maritime transport systems. Singapore and Dubai are among the most prominent.

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