b'2American Journal ofTransportation ajot.comGlobally ports post growth in 2024 but 25? TOP 100 Will the worlds top 100 container ports continueCONTAINER PORTS 2025to grow in 2025? The outlook is foggy.By George Lauriat, AJOTThe Port of Shanghai, oncetwo port clusters in Vietnam Ho againleadingtheAJOTsTopChi Minh (Cat Lai) ranked 24 th100 Container Port list, in 2024and Ci Mep-Thi Vai ranked 32 nd . handled a remarkable 50 millionRecently, CMA CGM announced TEUsthefirstportevertothattheywouldbebuildinga doso. Theachievementspeaksnew terminal in partnership with volumes not only for the Port ofSaigon Newport in Haiphong in Shanghai but all container ports.northern Vietnam. The new ter-Couldtheglobalizationoftheminal would have a capacity of lasthalfcenturyoccurwithout1.9 million TEUs and is sched-the box and without the containeruled to open in 2028.ports of the world shifting unfath- Vietnamsportsectoris omable volumes of goods? Prob- growingfastbutisntalone. ably not.LaemChabanginThailand The question now is whetherranked20 th with9.46million tariffs and the global trade warTEUsandcouldfinditselfin willsabotagethegrowthinthe top 10 in the not-too-distant oceanfreightthathascharac- future. Port Klang number 10 on terizedthelasthalfcentury?the list with 14.64 million TEUs There have been slumps associ- (GROWTHcontinued onatedwitheconomicdownturns page 10) Ane Maersk completes first methanol bunkering at Port of Antwerp-Brugesas with the Great Recession in 2008 or more recently with the COVID-19pandemicMarch of 2020 to May of 2023. How-ever, the size of containerships havegrownashavethecon-tainer terminals handling them.In2024eighteenports handledover10million TEUsThe Premier Gatewayand another four over 9 million TEUs.Unsurprisingly,China hasthelargestrepresentationTrademovingthroughthePortofLongBeachreachesevery onthelist.Sixofthetopten containerportsareinChina.stateandsupports2.7millionjobsthroughouttheU.S.We Ningbo-Zhoushanhasbeenmove goods to market with world-class customer service and growing very fast and now is on theheelsofSingaporefortheoperational excellence.numbertwoslotwithover39 million TEUs to the Lion Citys 41.1 million TEUs.The Chinese ports of Shen-zhen(SouthChina)andQing-dao (North China) 33.39 million TEUsand30.87millionTEUs respectively round out the 30 mil-lion TEU ports. And while most of Chinas entries on the Top 100 list are growing, Hong Kong is slowlyslippingback.In2024 Hong Kong handled 13.69 mil-lion TEUs down from the 16.57 million TEUshandledin2022. With the new ocean carrier alli-ance structure emphasizing more hub and spoke services, the num-bers could slip even further as the port is bypassed for calls in Shen-zhen and Guangzhou on the Pearl River. The Port of Busan in South Korea, (ranked number 7 on the chart) is in a similar position as someallianceselecttocallon just one or two north Asia ports.T heP lusT rendTheChinaPlus1,2,3 strategy or more has been under-wayforyearsnowasimport-ers have diversified their supply chains away from China. How-ever, as James Hookham, direc-tor of the Global Shippers Forum pointed out in an AJOT interview with Stuart Todd, Chinas manu-facturershavealsoshiftedand more often it is a China+China-abroad move rather than a total abstinencetoChinasourcing. Nonetheless,the Trumpadmin-istrationsall-outglobaltariff blitz has made international trade more complex. And the diversi-fication of the supply chain has had a major impact on container port development, and it shows in the Top 100 chart. Foremost amongthebeneficiariesisthe'