Sinking fortunes: Hong Kong falls out of world’s top 10 busiest ports ranking for the first time as volumes slump
- City’s port knocked to 11th place in 2023 by Dubai’s Jebel Ali port, while Shanghai and Singapore retained the top two spots, according to data from Alphaliner
- Volumes fell by 14.1 per cent year on year to 14.3 million TEUs, continuing a slump for seven straight years amid competition from mainland ports
Hong Kong, once the world’s busiest port, failed for the first time to rank among the world’s top 10 ports in 2023, reflecting the city’s struggles to reverse a long-term decline in shipping volumes.
It was knocked to 11th place by Dubai’s Jebel Ali port, according to data from shipping data provider Alphaliner on the world’s 30 busiest container terminals.
Shanghai retained the top spot, a position it has held since 2010 when it overtook now second-placed Singapore. In total, six of the top 10 spots were held by mainland Chinese cities – Ningbo, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Shanghai – with Busan in South Korea, Los Angeles in the US, and Dubai rounding out the list.
The drop is bruising for Hong Kong, which was the world’s top container port for most of the period from 1987 to 2004. The city has posted seven straight years of declining shipment volumes because of steep competition from its mainland counterparts, according to Alphaliner.
Traffic last year slumped by 14.1 per cent from 2022 to 14.3 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), or the size of a standard shipping container. It marks a 21.6 per cent fall since the pre-pandemic days, with 18.3 million TEUs passing through the port in 2019.
By contrast, Shanghai handled 49.16 million TEUs in 2023, up 3.9 per cent year on year and a 13.5 per cent increase from 2019.
