The Antwerp-Bruges container port is moving ever closer to its competitor Rotterdam in a recent ranking of the largest European ports. The Belgian port’s container throughput grew by 4.1% to 6.66 million TEU in the first half of the year, based on the number of loaded and unloaded 20-foot standard containers. This puts the port of Antwerp just 2.5% behind Rotterdam, where 6.83 million TEU were loaded and unloaded.
It looks like Rotterdam’s comfortable lead is slowly melting away. In 2023, the port of Rotterdam was still more than 900,000 TEU ahead of its “Belgian antagonist” with a throughput of around 13.4 million TEU over the entire year. In 2022, the Dutch port was more than 1 million TEU ahead of Antwerp. However, there is an important detail to consider: The contractual merger of the ports of Antwerp and Bruges was not completed until April 2022. In 2021, the year before the two Belgian ports were merged, Rotterdam’s lead over Antwerp was more than 3 million TEU, with a value of 15.3 million TEU.
But the merger is not the only reason why Antwerp is catching up with Rotterdam in terms of TEU throughput. In fact, the Belgian port’s rapid advance is due to its significantly better growth development. While the port of Antwerp-Bruges increased its throughput by more than 4% in the first half of the year, Rotterdam’s throughput grew by only 2% in the same period.
Since the beginning of the year, the European North Range ports have generally seen an upturn in transshipment activity. Last year’s trend of declining volumes in the North Range ports, which contrasted with the positive global volume trend, appears to have come to an end, at least for the time being.
In general, the port of Shanghai remains the undisputed leader with a total of six Chinese ports in the global top 10.
Rotterdam always in the top spot
Since the rise of the container port of Rotterdam in the early 1960s, the Dutch port has been the undisputed leader in container throughput in Europe. After overtaking the port of New York in 1962, it also briefly became the world’s largest port. It will be interesting to see how the Rotterdam Port Authority reacts to Antwerp’s endeavors to get closer.
