Westports Holdings, a port operator located in Port Klang along the Straits of Malacca, has recorded a fall of almost 1 million TEU in annual container throughput after reaching nine million TEUs for 2017.
The fall for the 12-month period ended Dec 31, 2017 is largely due to changes in the carrier alliances that took hold in April, which have knocked the container volumes down from an all-time high of 9.95 million TEU in 2016.
In its last financial results announcement in November, Ruben Emir Gnanalingam, the Chief Executive Officer of Westports stated: “The container shipping industry has just gone through an unprecedented recalibration and realignment processes which affected almost all major liners.
“At Westports, we now serve as one of the South East Asia transshipment hubs for Ocean Alliance and also as a port of call for a service under THE Alliance.
“The industry’s recent mergers and acquisitions have affected our container volume handled, especially of transshipment boxes, and Westports have now transitioned successfully towards serving new services under Ocean Alliance and THE Alliance.”