Study: PTP to grab much of Asia-Pacific containers
The Star Maritime
The Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) in Johor is expected to capture a substantial portion of the estimated 64 million TEUs in the Asia-Pacific region by the year 2011, a recent study by the UN-Economic and Social Commission for the Asia-Pacific (UN-Escap) revealed.
UN-Escap transport, communications, tourism and infrastructure development division economic affairs officer Dong-Woo Ha said that new ports like PTP, Gwangyang in South Korea and Shanghai were projected to attract a huge number of transshipment boxes.
He said the traditional ports of Singapore, Kaohsiung and Hong Kong were expected to retain importance throughout the period.
“If the big-ships scenario does eventuate, it will have implications on both transshipment opportunities between ports,” he said in a paper present4ed at a port seminar recently.
Under the big-ships category, Dong said around 870 vessels with capacity of more than 3,500 TEUs would be in service in 2011, including 127 ships of 9,000 – 13,000 TEUs capacity.
UN-Escap had forecast that by the end of 2011, the total container volume would grow to 216 million boxes an average growth of 7.2% per annum.
The study showed that China would be Asia’s largest generator of containerized cargo by 2006.
Dong said that China, when combined with Taiwan and Hong Kong, would account for 40% of total container throughput in Asia-Pacific.
He said the rapid increase in container handling in Malaysian ports was due to expansion of transshipment business.
It was estimated that international container throughput in Malaysian port would rise 12% a year from 3.8 million TEUs in 1999 to 14.6 million TEUs in 2011.