AUSTRALIA's number two container port, Sydney's Port Botany, handled 2
AUSTRALIA's number two container port, Sydney's Port Botany, handled 2.65 million TEU in 2018, representing a year-on-year increase of 4.7 per cent driven by export and import volume growth, yet the containers arrived and departed on fewer, yet larger, containerships. Port Botany handled 1.31 million export TEU in 2018, up 4.4 per cent, while imports rose five per cent to 1.34 million TEU, Riga's Transport Weekly reported.
However, Port Botany experienced a marked decline in the number of port calls made by smaller containerships and a significant jump in calls by larger vessels. Overall, 1,119 box ships called at Botany in 2018, some 23 less than the year before.
Ships with a container carrying capacity of up to 3,999 TEU made 388 calls at port Botany last year, down 16 per cent on the 2017 figure. Other decliners included ships in the 5,000-5,999 TEU range, which made 340 port calls, or 19 less.
Calls by vessels ranging in size between 7,000 and 7,999 TEU were down by 17 per cent but this is only two less ships than 2017. Ten ships of this size called at port Botany in 2018.
There was a small four per cent increase in port calls by vessels in the 4,000-4,999 TEU range, up from 248 calls in 2017 to 258 in 2018.
Vessels of 6,000-6,999 TEU generated a 76.3 per cent increase in the volume of calls. There were 59 calls by vessels of this size in 2017 and 104 in 2018.
Back in 2017 only one ship in the 8,000-plus TEU size range called at Botany but, in the last calendar year, 19 did so, according to New York's FreightWaves.
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