Seaports – the nexus of trade, logistics, and production – are hugely important in facilitating both national and international trade. Recent decades have witnessed a spectacular increase in freight transport worldwide, 90% of which crosses the sea after loading in seaports. Container transport in particular has been influenced by this increase in global sea transport. For example, the maximum capacity of containerships used to be 10,000 TEU, but this increased over a 10-year period to 22,000 TEU. There are, of course, knock-on environmental effects from these developments that must be addressed by the seaports that have to accommodate incoming, outgoing and transiting trade.
