Container throughput at leading container ports remains well above 2020 levels in April.

As the latest data in the Monthly Container Port Monitor indicate, the upswing in world trade continues unabated. Although throughput at the 90 ports monitored as a whole was down by almost 1 million TEU compared with March this year, at 43.6 million TEU it was still 15% higher than the throughput in April 2020.
For the first time, the ports of Africa (mainly Egypt and South Africa) show the biggest growth in the monitor. They achieved record growth of almost 33% compared to April last year, increasing their market share in total throughput from 1.8% to 2.1%.

However, the growth rates of the ports of North America, Australia and Northeast Asia, with +24%, +22.6% and +14.9% in terms of total throughput in the first four months of 2021 compared to last year, were also considerably higher than the growth rates of the other ports. In the same period, the European ports monitored here only managed to increase their total throughput by 0.63 million TEU or 2.5%.