China

Visualizing Global Shipping Container Traffic

Published

6 years ago

November 14, 2018

Nick Routley

Shipping container traffic

Visualizing Global Shipping Container Traffic

Globalization owes a lot to the humble shipping container.

In the distant past, loading a ship was a complicated affair involving pallets, crates, and winches. This process was labor-intensive and expensive, meaning most goods were simply not worth shipping overseas.

In the 1970s, the standardized shipping container solved this problem on a wide scale and turned the world economy on its head. This standardization drove the cost of shipping down as the efficiency of ports skyrocketed. Modern ports can now move upwards of 70 containers per crane per hour.

It doesn’t matter anymore where you produce something now, because transport costs aren’t important.

– Rainer Horn, Hapag-Lloyd

Made in China

With the barrier of shipping costs effectively removed, production began to migrate to countries with cheaper production costs.

China is at the center of this new paradigm: nearly one-third of all global containers move through Chinese ports, and seven of the top 10 ports in the world are all located in China.

Countries Moving the Most Units

Here are the 50 countries with the most 20-foot containers passing through their ports:

Rank	Country	20-Foot Container Count (2017)
1	China (inc. H.K.)	234,489,920
2	United States	51,425,464
3	Singapore	33,600,000
4	South Korea	27,427,000
5	Malaysia	24,719,000
6	Japan	21,904,444
7	U.A.E.	21,280,900
8	Germany	19,447,600
9	Spain	17,065,000
10	Netherlands	13,951,000
11	Indonesia	13,859,500
12	India	13,259,000
13	Vietnam	12,284,395
14	Belgium	11,857,009
15	Thailand	10,732,000
16	Italy	10,698,030
17	United Kingdom	10,530,328
18	Brazil	10,049,282
19	Turkey	9,927,385
20	Saudi Arabia	8,404,000
21	Philippines	8,196,961
22	Australia	7,693,643
23	Egypt	7,430,000
24	Panama	6,900,000
25	France	6,714,551
26	Mexico	6,305,000
27	Canada	6,298,590
28	Sri Lanka	6,000,000
29	Oman	4,784,712
30	South Africa	4,634,900
31	Morocco	4,570,000
32	Russia	4,515,000
33	Greece	4,461,000
34	Chile	4,189,669
35	Colombia	3,444,503
36	New Zealand	3,227,100
37	Portugal	3,220,100
38	Malta	3,203,000
39	Iran	3,091,000
40	Pakistan	2,985,600
41	Israel	2,865,028
42	Bangladesh	2,587,000
43	Poland	2,459,900
44	Peru	2,368,989
45	Ecuador	1,944,135
46	Finland	1,920,800
47	Argentina	1,750,102
48	Jamaica	1,689,000
49	Nigeria	1,656,000
50	Sweden	1,593,450

Asian countries dominate shipping container traffic, taking up four of the top five spots. Singapore, with a population of just 5.4 million, moved nearly 34 million 20-foot containers in 2017. That’s more than Italy, France, Russia, Sweden, and the U.K. combined.

The United States is still the number two country in the world in terms of the number of containers handled. Two massive ports in Los Angeles control over a quarter of the North American market share, and the Port of New York & New Jersey is the largest on the Eastern Seaboard.