The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has forcefully reminded us of the importance of maritime trade: it moves approximately 80% of the volume of world trade, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Essential to that logistics chain are 20-foot-long container ports, measured in TEU (the acronym for Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit), the standard unit of maritime transportation.
So that we understand each other, TEUs are the currency with which port traffic is measured globally: the more TEUs, the more important they are in logistics and the world economy. Know where those ports are is, in reality, knowing who’s in charge in the global economy. And the map has a clear dominator.
This graph created by Visual Capitalist is a ranking of the world’s 20 busiest container ports ordered by total cargo volume processed in a year from from the 2025 Lloyd’s List databaseone of the leading voices in the sector. The metric used to measure it is precisely the TEU, that metal box measuring 6.06 meters long × 2.44 meters wide × 2.59 meters high. Each bar on the graph is equivalent to tens of millions of these boxes moving through the planet’s oceans.
In 2024, the 20 main ports in the world generated consolidated traffic of 414.6 million TEUs, 7.1% more than the previous year. Spoiler: 14 of those 20 ports are located in Asia. This Asian dominance is neither an accident nor by chance: it is the reflection of decades of accelerated industrialization, enormous investments in port infrastructure and the consolidation of Asia as the factory of the planet. AND who says Asia, says China: that Made in China that you find even in the soup. For you to see that silkscreen on an iPhone, on a shirt or on a lighter, the product in question had to cross half the world in a container to get here.
The ports with the most container traffic in the world. Visual Capitalist with data from Lloyd’s
China dominates manufacturing and maritime logistics
China concentrates more than 40% of global container traffic. Of the six busiest ports in the world, five are in China. Above the rest, Shanghai stands out, which processed more than 51.5 million TEUs in 2024, quite far from the 41.14 million in Singapore, the second. The leadership of Shanghai is absolute: It has held that title for almost two decades and it alone moves more cargo than all the major European ports combined, to give us an idea of its magnitude. In any case, the eight Chinese ports present in the Top 20 generated 55.6% of the combined traffic in the ranking.
Special mention deserves the port of Hong Kong, a historic giant that has been the gateway to China for decades. Today is a victim both its own geography and the Chinese economic transformation: Pearl River Delta ports such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou have taken traffic away from it on the one hand. On the other hand, the rise of Shanghai and Ningbo-Zhoushan has ended up relegating it until it disappears from the Top 10. This was rounded off by the reconfiguration of global shipping alliances, which began to replace Hong Kong as a hub with mainland ports with more capacity and lower operating costs.
You have to get out of the Top 10 to find a port outside Asia. The first is Rotterdam, the bastion of maritime trade in Europe, which is in eleventh position with 13.8 million TEUs moved last year. Besides, had modest growth 2.8% compared to the previous year. The photograph of the old continent returns an image of residual influence: the accumulated traffic of the 10 main European ports reached just 65 million TEUs in 2024. If any past time seems better, it is because it was, at least in maritime trade. Obviously, colonization favored that flow (at least unidirectionally).
More of the same in America: the busiest port is in Los Angeles and handles approximately 9.9 million TEUs: the Californian port is the gateway for trade from the Pacific, closely followed by Long Beach, with 9.1 million. The influence of America and Europe on maritime merchandise traffic is a clear reflection of their production structures, with relocation by flag.
Cover | Visual Capitalist
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