Italian ports’ container traffic up six percent in January-May

Tuesday, 02 August 2011 10:08:08 (GMT+3) |

According to the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, in the first five months this year container traffic in Italian ports grew by six percent year on year. In the given period, Italian ports handled 4.14 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), up six percent. The increase was mainly due to the performance of gateway ports, i.e., those ports where containers are unloaded in order to be delivered to customers, while the market shares of transhipment ports decreased further following a year-long downtrend worsened by the harsh competition of North African competitors.

While the global crisis effects still affected marine trafic in H1, last year drew to a close posting a 3.7 percent increase year on year to 9.86 million TEUs handled in Italy. In fact, in the first five months of 2010, the year-on-year variation was still negative by 3.8 percent, and only in the second half of the year did the market recover to an overall year-on-year increase for the whole year.

Italian ports containers handling jan-may 2011
Gateway ports	Containers handled (x 1,000 TEUs)	Y-o-y variation (%)	Market share (%)
Genova	758	+7	18.3
La Spezia	538	+9	13
Livorno	269	+4	6.5
Napoli	224	+0.6	5.4
Venezia	184	+22.9	4.4
Trieste	137	+12.8	3.3
Ravenna	92	+17	2.2
Salerno	89	+6	2.2
Transhipment ports	Containers handled (x 1,000 TEUs)	Y-o-y variation (%)	Market share (%)
Gioia Tauro	1,170	+6.1	28.3
Taranto	275	+18.2	6.6
Cagliari	253	-9.1	6.1

On the gateway ports' side, the biggest increases were recorded by Adriatic Sea ports, but the biggest market share is still held by ports in the Tyrrenian and Ligurian Seas.

According to Il Sole 24 Ore, following the global crisis transhipment ports reduced their market share from 55 percent in 2009 to 41 percent in the first five months of 2010.