All but two of China’s biggest ports saw TEU throughput increase year-on-year (YoY), according to the Ningbo Shipping Exchange.
Only the ports of Dalian and Shanghai experienced dips in volume, with traffic at each falling by 38.2% and 1.7% respectively in the first nine months of 2020.
Dalian was also the only major port in China to suffer a drop in YoY volume October YoY, with traffic falling by 58%.
Tianjin was the best performing major Chinese port when TEU was measured between January and September and saw its TEU throughput increase by 5.6% YoY, with a 9.3% increase in October YoY.
Shenzhen was the best performing port and saw its October TEU traffic increase by 21.7% YoY, closely followed Ningo and Zhoushan, where TEU traffic increased by 21.5%. However, Shenzhen’s January-September traffic only increased by 0.2%. and Ningbo and Zhoushan’s jumped by 2.4%.
Between January-October 2020 container throughput at Chinese ports was 217.2 million TEU, an overall year-on-year (YoY) decrease of 0.03%.
In its report, the Ningbo Shipping Exchange said the recent increase in export traffic from China had caused congestion at major ports in the US and suggested freight rates, particularly on the Ningbo to North America route, will continue to rise.
“Due to the surge in cargo volume, port operations continue to be under pressure and there is congestion at US ports. The schedule reliability of vessel is unstable, and space is tight. Therefore, the freight rates of the route continue to rise,” the Ningbo Shipping Exchange said.
“The average freight rate of 40GP from Ningbo Port to Los Angeles port and Charleston port in October was $3,966 and $4,764, have a slight increase of 1.2% and 2.3% month-on-month respectively.”
