The productivity challenge

摘要

The container port industry has almost certainly moved into a new era of slower growth than those it has experienced until now, but for the 20 largest ports in the world there is no shortage of major challenges. For the best part of a decade, until the onset of the global financial crisis and the subsequent recession in many of the world's established economies, the most pressing challenge that ports had to face was coping with the relentless double-digit growth in volumes that presented themselves at terminal quays year after year. According to Drewry Maritime Research, the compound annual growth rate in global container traffic - and not just the throughput at the 20 largest ports - was 11.4 per cent between 2001 and 2008, rising from 249 million teu to 525 million teu.