Leading Belgian transport economist Gustaaf de Monie predicts that Singapore and the Pearl River Delta ports around Hong Kong are set to be among a handful of global terminal hubs around which a massive increase of container shipping traffic will organise itself over the next decade.

He told participants at the Terminal Operators Conference in Lisbon, Portugal, last week for that around five global hub ports will emerge over the next ten years.

The Maersk deepsea interline hub at Algeciras in southern Spain, as well as Aden in the Middle East and Salalah in Oman are also candidates for the world port premier league.

In the Americas, Freeport in the Bahamas, Kingston in Jamaica and ports either side of Panama canal all have scale and potential to emerge as main global hubs “the big question is whether the United States of America will allow cargo to be transhipped to a Caribbean port,” Dr de Monie added. 

“That is a matter of free trade and there should not be any barriers to free trade,” he added.

de Monie said that the new hubs will have to have the capacity to take vessels between 10,000 TEUs and 15,000 TEUs.

He added there would still be a place for small port operators to act as regional transhipment pivots, sub-regional ports and minor ports. 

“Everyone wants to be a hub port and there is still a big future for smaller ports and vessels to serve their regional hinterland.”

He said that vessels on the main east/west shipping axis would in future call at just one global hub. 

“The growth of traffic, the continued reliance on maritime transport and the need to cut costs will further lead to scale increases and the ordering of very large container vessels,” he said.

He noted that cellular container vessels now account for 72 per cent of the global container fleet compared to 43 per cent in 1983 with vessels over 4,000 TEUs now comprising 20 per cent of the world fleet when just one in ten of vessels two decades ago were among the top 2,000-3,000 TEUs category.

“Containerships will get ever larger and there are orders for vessels for up to 7,000 teu, letters of intent for 9,000 TEUs and Maersk is rumoured to have an order slot for 10,000 TEUs vessels,” he said.