Containerization in the context of Port of Zeebrugge

Bouches-du-Rhône (/ˌbuːʃ djuː ˈroʊn/ BOOSH dew ROHN; French: les Bouches-du-Rhône [le buʃ dy ʁon] , locally [le ˈbuʃə dy ˈʁɔnə]; Occitan: lei Bocas de Ròse [lej ˈbukɔz de ˈʀɔze]; "the Mouths of the Rhône") is a department in southern France. It borders Vaucluse to the north, Gard to the west and Var to the east. The Mediterranean Sea lies to the south. Its prefecture and largest city is Marseille; other important cities include Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Martigues and Aubagne.

Marseille, France's second-largest city, has one of the largest container ports in the country. It prides itself on being France's oldest city, founded by Greek settlers from Phocaea around 600 BC. Bouches-du-Rhône is the most populous department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, with 2,043,110 inhabitants as of 2019. It has an area of 5,087 km (1,964 sq mi). Its INSEE and postal code is 13.

The Port of Hamburg (German: Hamburger Hafen, pronounced [ˈhambʊʁɡɐ ˈhaːfn̩] ) is a seaport on the river Elbe in Hamburg, Germany, 110 kilometres (68 mi) from its mouth on the North Sea.

Known as Germany's "Gateway to the World" (Tor zur Welt), it is the country's largest seaport by volume. In terms of TEU throughput, Hamburg is the third-busiest port in Europe (after Rotterdam and Antwerp) and 15th-largest worldwide. In 2014, 9.73 million TEUs (20-foot standard container equivalents) were handled in Hamburg.

An intermodal container, often called a shipping container, or a freight container, (or simply "container") is a large metal crate designed and built for intermodal freight transport, meaning these containers can be used across different modes of transport – such as from ships to trains to trucks – without unloading and reloading their cargo. Intermodal containers are primarily used to store and transport materials and products efficiently and securely in the global containerized intermodal freight transport system, but smaller numbers are in regional use as well. It is like a boxcar that does not have wheels. Based on size alone, up to 95% of intermodal containers comply with ISO standards, and can officially be called ISO containers. These containers are known by many names: cargo container, sea container, ocean container, container van or sea van, sea can or C can, or MILVAN, or SEAVAN. The term CONEX (Box) is a technically incorrect carry-over usage of the name of an important predecessor of the ISO containers: the much smaller steel CONEX boxes used by the U.S. Army.

Intermodal containers exist in many types and standardized sizes, but 90 percent of the global container fleet are "dry freight" or "general purpose" containers: durable closed rectangular boxes, made of rust-retardant weathering steel; almost all 8 feet (2.4 m) wide, and of either 20 or 40 feet (6.1 or 12.2 m) standard length, as defined by International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard 668:2020. The worldwide standard heights are 8 feet 6 inches (2.6 m) and 9 feet 6 inches (2.9 m) – the latter are known as High Cube or Hi-Cube (HC or HQ) containers. Depending on the source, these containers may be termed TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), reflecting the 20- or 40-foot dimensions.

This article lists the world's busiest container ports (ports with container terminals that specialize in handling goods transported in intermodal shipping containers), by total number of twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) transported through the port. The table lists volume in thousands of TEU per year. The vast majority of containers moved by large, ocean-faring container ships are 20-foot (1 TEU) and 40-foot (2 TEU) ISO-standard shipping containers, with 40-foot units outnumbering 20-foot units to such an extent that the actual number of containers moved is between 55%–60% of the number of TEUs counted.

The latest ranking reflected the figures for the year 2025, as published in the Lloyds List Top 100 and World Shipping Council (2025 figures), unless otherwise indicated.

A container ship (also called boxship or spelled containership) is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport and now carry most seagoing non-bulk cargo.

Container ship capacity is measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). Typical loads are a mix of 20-foot (1-TEU) and 40-foot (2-TEU) ISO-standard containers, with the latter predominant.

Yangshan Port (Chinese: 洋山港, p Yángshān Gǎng, Wu Yan-se Kaon), formally the Yangshan Deep-Water Port (洋山深水港, p Yángshān Shēnshuǐ Gǎng, Wu Yan-se Sen-sy Kaon), is an offshore deep-water port for containerization in Hangzhou Bay south of Shanghai, China, built on land reclamation joining the Lesser Yangshan Island with numerous other nearby islands of the northwestern Zhoushan archipelago. It is connected to Shanghai's Pudong New Area on the mainland by the 32.5 km-long (20.2 mi) Donghai Bridge, forming part of the Port of Shanghai, while the other islands of Yangshan archipelago (including the Greater Yangshan Island, where the civilian population of the archipelago live) are administered separately as part of Zhejiang's Shengsi County.

Yangshan Port is part of China's Maritime Silk Road, built to allow the Port of Shanghai to grow despite shallow waters near the shore. Prior to its construction, the Port of Shanghai was predominantly based around the mouth of the Huangpu River, which is too shallow to handle large container ships, forcing the port to often perform mid-stream operations within the Yangtze estuary, which often had to wait for the high tide hours, severely restricting the port's capacity. The construction of Yangshan Port allows berths with depths of up to 15 m (49 ft) to be built, and can handle today's largest container ships. In mid-2011, port officials said the port was on track to move 12.3 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) during the year, up from 10.1 million TEUs in 2010, overtaking Port of Singapore to become the world's busiest container port. In 2015, the port handled 36.54 million TEUs, and by 2019, its throughput had increased to 43.35 million TEU.

Transloading, also known as cross-docking, is the process of transferring a shipment from one mode of transportation to another. It is most commonly employed when one mode cannot be used for the entire trip, such as when goods must be shipped internationally from one inland point to another. Such a trip might require transport by truck to an airport, then by airplane overseas, and then by another truck to its destination; or it might involve bulk material (such as coal) loaded to rail at the mine and then transferred to a ship at a port. Transloading is also required at railroad break-of-gauge points, since the equipment can not pass from one track to another unless bogies are exchanged.

Since transloading requires handling of the goods, it causes a higher risk of damage. Therefore, transloading facilities are designed with the intent of minimizing handling. Due to differing capacities of the different modes, the facilities typically require some storage facility, such as warehouses or rail yards. For bulk goods, specialized material handling and storage are typically provided (as, for example, in grain elevators). Intermodal transport limits handling by using standardized containers, which are handled as units and which also serve for storage if needed.

Port Jersey, officially the Port Jersey Port Authority Marine Terminal and referred to as the Port Jersey Marine Terminal, is an intermodal freight transport facility that includes a container terminal located on the Upper New York Bay in the Port of New York and New Jersey. The municipal border of the Hudson County cities of Jersey City and Bayonne runs along the long pier extending into the bay.

The facility was created between 1972 and 1976 and acquired by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in July 2010. CMA CGM operates a post-panamax shipping facility at this terminal under the name Port Liberty Bayonne.

A rail land bridge is a route allowing the transport of containers by rail between ports on either side of a land mass, such as North America. Jean-Paul Rodrigue defined a rail land bridge as having two characteristics: First, a single bill of lading issued by the freight forwarder that covers the entire journey, and second, the freight remains in the same container for the total transit. One example of a rail land bridge is the Eurasian Land Bridge. A transcontinental railroad can be a type of land bridge.

Supply-side economics is a macroeconomic theory postulating that economic growth can be most effectively fostered by lowering taxes, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade. According to supply-side economics theory, consumers will benefit from greater supply of goods and services at lower prices, and employment will increase. Supply-side fiscal policies are designed to increase aggregate supply, as opposed to aggregate demand, thereby expanding output and employment while lowering prices. Such policies are of several general varieties:

1. Investments in human capital, such as education, healthcare, and encouraging the transfer of technologies and business processes, to improve productivity (output per worker). Encouraging globalized free trade via containerization is a major recent example.
2. Tax reduction, to provide incentives to work, invest and take risks. Lowering income tax rates and eliminating or lowering tariffs are examples of such policies.
3. Investments in new capital equipment and research and development (R&D), to further improve productivity. Allowing businesses to depreciate capital equipment more rapidly (e.g., over one year as opposed to 10) gives them an immediate financial incentive to invest in such equipment.
4. Reduction in government regulations, to encourage business formation and expansion.

A basis of supply-side economics is the Laffer curve, a theoretical relationship between rates of taxation and government revenue. The Laffer curve suggests that when the tax level is too high, lowering tax rates will boost government revenue through higher economic growth, though the level at which rates are deemed "too high" is disputed.

Esbjerg (Danish: [ˈesˌpjɛɐ̯ˀ] , Jutish: [ˈɛspʲæa̯]) is a seaport city and seat of Esbjerg Municipality on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in southwest Denmark. By road, it is 71 kilometres (44 mi) west of Kolding and 164 kilometres (102 mi) southwest of Aarhus. With an urban population of 71,554 (1 January 2025) it is the fifth-largest city in Denmark, and the largest in West Jutland.

Before a decision was made to establish a harbour (now the second largest in Denmark) at Esbjerg in 1868, the area consisted of only a few farms. Esbjerg developed quickly with the population rising to 13,000 by 1901 and 70,000 by 1970. In addition to its fishing and shipping activities, it also became an important centre for agricultural exports. Over the years, many of the city's visitors have arrived by ferry from Harwich, Essex, England, but this service closed in September 2014 having run since 1875. The harbour facilities are being expanded to answer the needs of the wind-turbine industry and container shipping traffic.

China Shipping Group Company was a former shipping corporation from 1997 to 2016, owned by the State Council of China. The company merged with China Ocean Shipping Company to form China COSCO Shipping Corporation in January 2016.

China Shipping Group was mainly engaged in shipping of oil tankers, passenger ships and container vessels. Other related businesses included ship and Terminal management, finance and investment, engineering, human resources, trading and information technology.

Port Botany is a deepwater seaport located in Botany Bay in Sydney, Australia. The port is dominated by trade in containerised manufactured products and, to a lesser extent, bulk liquid imports including petroleum and natural gas. It is one of Australia's largest container ports and is administered by NSW Ports which entered into a 99-year lease agreement with the Port Authority of New South Wales in May 2013.

A port operator is a port authority or company that contracts with the port authority to move cargo through a port at a contracted minimum level of productivity. They may be state-owned (particularly for port authorities) or privately run.

The work involves managing the movement of cargo containers between cargo ships, trucks and freight trains and optimizing the flow of goods through customs to minimize the amount of time a ship spends in port. Maintaining efficiency involves managing and upgrading gantry cranes, berths, waterways, roads, storage facilities, communication equipment, computer systems and dockworkers' union contracts. The port operator also manages paperwork, leases, safety and port security.

The Port of Bridgetown (officially the Deep Water Harbour), (UN/LOCODE: BB BGI, Port Callsign: 8PB) is a seaport in Bridgetown on the southwest coast of Barbados. Situated at the North-Western end of Carlisle Bay, the harbour handles all of the country's international bulk ship-based trade and commerce. In addition to international-shipping the Deep Water Harbour is the port of entry for southern-Caribbean cruise ships. The port is one of three designated ports of entry in Barbados, along with the privately owned Port Saint Charles marina and the Sir Grantley Adams International Airport. The port's time zone is GMT −4, and it handles roughly 700,000 cruise passengers and 900,000 tonnes of containerised cargo per year.