Hong Kong port now dropping behind Ningbo after Shenzhen sprints ahead

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First Shenzhen, now Ningbo that has taken the city's world ranking as a container operation

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A ship docked in Kowloon, Hong Kong, as the city is falling increasingly behind its rivals in mainland China. Photo: EPA

Jing Yang

Published: 2:00pm, 17 Jul 2015Updated: 2:41am, 18 Jul 2015

Hong Kong’s container port throughput has been overtaken by Ningbo in the first half of this year, only two years after the city was knocked down by Shenzhen from the third spot in the world’s top ports.

Hong Kong handled 10.1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (teu) in the January-June period, down 9.7 per cent from the year-ago level, according to government data released on Friday. Ningbo-Zhoushan, where two neighbouring cities in Zhejiang province have united their coastal front to form a port complex, recorded throughput up 9.1 per cent year-on-year to 10.5 million teu.

Waning port traffic has been a chronic issue for Hong Kong. Land constraints and high costs are the main drivers that have sent business scurrying away. A diminishing manufacturing base in the Pearl River Delta has also cast a cloud for all regional ports, including Shenzhen and Guangzhou. But the tumble this year for Hong Kong is precipitated by some other factors.

The traffic composition in Hong Kong has undergone drastic changes over the last decade. With the opening up of the mainland economy and its ports, Hong Kong’s role has shifted from serving the China hinterland to being a mere transshipment hub, where a container is discharged here and loaded on another ship. Last year, transshipment cargoes accounted for 72 per cent of total traffic, compared to only a quarter in the early 2000s.

“Transshipment cargo is very footloose and will be routed through the absolutely cheapest [transport] corridors,” said Andy Lane, a partner at CTI Consultancy.

Han Ning, deputy China manager at UK consulting firm Drewry, added that, unlike import or export cargoes, transshipment volumes are two-way. Once transshipments are gone, they are reflected as a loss for both the way in and the way out.

The majority of the world’s 20 container shipping lines since this year started operational blocs on east-west trades. The grouping resulted in a sweeping restructuring of networks and reduction of transshipping routes.