b'JUNE 21 - JULY 25, 2021NORTH AMERICAS TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS N EWSPAPER 25Top 100 Containerports:GLOBAL 100 CONTAINER PORTS 2021Containerizations great reboundand whyBy George Lauriat, AJOTThere have been very fewhalfof2020,firstasatrot years in which global containerandthenturningintoafull throughputTEUshandledblown gallop. And when the by containerports has faileddust had settled, remarkably togrowthatisuntiltheTEU volumes were off only COVID-19pandemicshut- 1.2% (BIMCO figure). It was downglobaleconomies.Ina declinethe first decline in 2020, it is estimated that con- over a decadebut the dif-tainerports handled 801.48 mil- ference of where the numbers lion TEUsaround10millioncould have landed and where TEUs less than in 2019 [basedthey actually did is astound-on UNCTAD/World Bank fig- ing.Thetotalfortheyear, ures/BIMCO]. This was highlyifthesecondhalfrebound unusualasglobalcontainerdidnt occur, could have sunk throughputhasconsistentlythe2020annualtotalTEU risen for nearly three decadesthroughput to approximately with only one other outlier. 756 million TEU rather than Unsurprisingly,thelast(REBOUNDcontinued on timethisayearofTEUpage 27) A container ship sails out of the Yangshan Deepwater Port in Shanghai, China.declinehappenedwas during the Great Recession of 2009/10. During that period, TEUs in 2008 were at 516.15 million and plunged in 2009 to472.18millionTEUsThe Port of Choicebeforerecoveringto543.97 millionTEUsin2010.The almost44milliondropin TEUswasfollowedbyanWe choose innovation, sustainability, leadership. Operational excellence unprecedentedreboundofand long-term vision make the Port of Long Beach the Port of Choice.nearly 72 million TEUs. Theplungeandrecov-ery from the Great Recession wasdizzying,whichbrings us to the Great Rebound con-tainerportsareexperiencing at the moment. Goinginto2018,the worlds containerports posted athroughputtotalof795.74 million TEUs. In 2019, with the pandemic starting to hit its stride, world ports continued to grow tallying an estimated 811.22 million TEUs. It wasnt until 2020, that the impacts of the pandemic and shutdowns begantoshow.Blanksail-ingsa wonderfully elegant euphemismforanunsched-uled,unilateralcancellation of a container ships port call oreliminationofanentire routebecame de rigueur as slot capacity cutbacks tried to matchtheeconomicrealities of the pandemic. Itsalsoworthnoting that in 2020, besides the pan-demic, the hurricane season in the US also had a detrimental impactontheNorth Ameri-can supply chain [particularly indollarfiguresonimports whichwereoffasmuchas 33%accordingtotheU.S. Congressional figures].Still,theimpactofthe pandemic on global TEU vol-umes in 2020 was much less thanoriginallyforecast.For example,BIMCOreported that container volumes in the first half of 2020 were down 6.8%in line with the dire forecasts for a disastrous full year total. But in a surprising turn-about,thepaceofglobal trade picked up in the second'