32 American Journal of Transportation American Journal of Transportation ajot.com Building what your customers need. Port Houston is investing in infrastructure. We have added capacity at our Bayport Container Terminal with the addition of a new wharf and cranes, and we’ve expanded the Houston Ship Channel through the Galveston Bay Reach, allowing for larger vessels and improving efficiency along the nation's number one waterway. Get your cargo to your customers faster by choosing Port Houston. www.porthouston.com although China remains the top source of inbound TEUs, the port’s tonnage leader was the US, as imports of American sourced liquid and dry bulk freight led the way in the diverse dual port 2025. Germany’s largest port is the Port of Hamburg. The port ranks 26th and has long counted China as its leading trade partner in 2025 recording 2.3 million TEUs. It remained that way. The US with 510,000 TEUs was in the number two slot but business was off by 25.6%, as tariffs dampened demand. However, India and the Indian Sub-Continent (ISC) region is rapidly rising as an emerging trade partner with over a 49% increase in 2025 to 290,000 TEUs. India’s neighboring Sri Lanka, also experienced a surge, increasing by over 22% to 172,000 TEUs. It is worth noting that the Port of Columbo, in Sri Lanka, posted a throughput of nearly 8.3 million TEUs in 2025, ranking 28th and up from 6.9 million TEUs in 2023. The Port of Valenica, ranked 38th, located on the Mediterranean Sea, is Spain’s largest port handling almost 5.7 million TEUs in 2025. Like many Euro- pean ports, China was the top trading part- ner, with over 550,000 TEUs in import, followed by the US, Italy and Algeria. The Port of Bremerhaven in Ger- many, had a throughput of 4.9 million TEUs ranking 41st on the list. The larg- est trade partner in TEUs for the Port of Bremerhaven was China and the US was second. The US has a long-stand- ing trans-Atlantic business with Bremer/ Bremerhaven, and the connection is still an important link. Like Valencia, the French port of Le Havre (Haropa) is also located on the Mediterranean Sea. Le Havre, ranked 65 on the list, had a throughput of 3.2 million TEUs in 2025 — and has for the most part annually posted around 3 million TEUs in recent years. The Span of Mediterranean Container Ports The throughputs for container ports in the Mediterranean and Middle East have been adversely impacted by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East along with other geo-pollical issues — however while the throughput numbers in 2026 have plummeted for some ports as they are more directly impacted —the volumes in 2025 were relatively strong. As mentioned above the Spanish port of Valencia handled nearly 5.7 million TEUs while Barcelona ranked 56th and had a throughput of 3.7 million TEUs. Algeciras, (ranked 43rd) located on the Straits of Gibraltar, notched a throughput of 4.74 million TEUs in 2025. However, the most impressive throughput in was the North African hub port of Tanger Med located in Morocco at the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar which ranked 16th and handled over 11 million TEUs — up from around 7.6 million in 2022. Italy’s transshipment hub the Port of Gioia Tauro also benefits from its Med location handling around 4.5 million TEUs in 2025 and with rail connections links the port to Northern Europe, Italy’s northern port of Genoa. The quintessential Mediterranean hub port is the island of Malta’s Marsax- lokk container port. In 2025 the port han- dled nearly 2.9 million TEUs and ranked 70th in the world. Piraeus, another Med hub port ranked 52 had a throughput of nearly 4 million TEUs in ’25, but that is significantly off its peak of 4.94 million Enstructure acquires LOGISTEC’s marine terminal operations A mega-deal creates a mega-terminal group. (ACQUIRES – continued on page 38) By AJOT Staff In the marine terminal business, par- ticularly in North America, mega-deals don’t come along very often. And when a mega-deal happens, it is a surprise. So, on June 15th, when Enstructure, a Wellesley, Massachusetts-based termi- nal operator announced the acquisition of LOGISTEC, a Montreal, Quebec-based-ter- minal company — it was a surprise and rep- resented one of the biggest North America marine terminal deals in decades. Although the details of the transac- tion weren’t released, the merging of the operations of the two terminal operators will create one of the largest and most comprehensive terminal enterprises in North America. And it comes at a time, when the value of logistics assets in North America is ascending to meet demands of the supply chain. LOGISTEC has since its founding by Roger Paquin in 1952 grown to be one of the largest multi-purpose terminal com- panies in North America, with a portfolio of facilities that includes bulk, breakbulk and container operations and even trans- portation services in the Arctic. The ter- minal operator has facilities located in 62 ports and 84 terminals across the US and Canada and is majority owned by New York-based private equity firm, Blue Wolf Capital Partners LLC (Blue Wolf). Following the transaction, Blue Wolf will (TOP – continued on page 34) (TOP – continued from page 29)
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