Guangzhou Port Ranks Among the Best Ports in the World in Terms of Overall Efficiency and Loading and Unloading Efficiency


A few days ago, Shanghai Shipping Exchange announced the average in-port time and berthing time of international container ships on ocean-going trunk lines of major ports in the world in 2021. Among the top 20 ports in terms of container throughput in 2021, there are 9 Chinese ports, including Guangzhou Port, which ranks fourth in terms of overall efficiency with an average in-port time of 1.49 days and ranks second in terms of loading and unloading efficiency with an average berthing time of 0.85 day, only second to Kaohsiung Port (0.83 day).


The in-port time of a ship refers to the total duration from the arrival of the ship at the anchorage to berth to the completion of loading and unloading operations alongside berth and the departure from the berth. This index reflects the overall efficiency of port facilities and equipment, pilotage, dispatching, loading and unloading, collection and distribution, port customs clearance, etc. The berthing time of a ship refers to the total duration from the arrival of the ship at the berth for loading and unloading operations to the departure from the berth upon completed operations. This index mainly reflects the loading and unloading efficiency of the port during berthing.


Data show that most Chinese ports were of high overall efficiency and world-leading loading and unloading efficiency in 2021. Kaohsiung Port (1.03 days), Hong Kong Port (1.33 days), Xiamen Port (1.35 days) and Guangzhou Port (1.49 days) performed well in overall efficiency, compared with Port of Los Angeles (9.49 days) and Port of Long Beach (10.36 days) whose in-port time is much longer. Such Chinese ports as Kaohsiung Port (0.83 day), Guangzhou Port (0.85 day), Hong Kong Port (0.90 day), Xiamen Port (1.05 days) and Shanghai Port (1.06 days) had high loading and unloading efficiency, compared with Port of Hamburg (1.65 days), Port of New York (1.81 days), Port of Los Angeles (5.94 days) and Port of Long Beach (5.03 days) whose berthing time is relatively longer.


It is reported that Shanghai Shipping Exchange and CargoSmart have kept giving the annual report on in-port time and berthing time of container ships on ocean trunk lines ever since 2019. To this end, they select typical global ports to track 10 global trans-continental ocean trunk lines (including 102 subdivided routes) of the top 15 liner companies (accounting for 85.6% of the global container capacity), so as to obtain the indexes of ships’ in-port time and berthing time through electronic fence and other technologies based on the information of Automatic Ship Identification System (AIS). (Text by Gu Gu based on the data from Shipping Exchange Bulletin)