Reflections on the future of container ports in view of the new containerization trends

Recent years have seen a relative slowdown in container movements, which cannot be fully explained by fluctuations in the world economy. The authors note that the year-on-year change in throughput is decreasing relative to changes in GDP. In an attempt to explain these “seesaw” variations, several hypotheses are proposed and some are demonstrated, in particular the reprimarization of the economy, the miniaturization of cargoes, the possible decrease in transshipments, and the increasing use of 40- foot containers.