Transshipment up
following two-year dip

Port of Beirut sees

stable revenues

Transshipment of goods went up 40 percent in 2017 compared to the year before, according to statistics published by the Port Authority of Beirut (PoB).

The past two years have seen mergers in shipping lines because of the sluggish world economy. Giant transshipment companies like CMA CGM and MSC had, as a result, moved fewer transshipped goods during the last year. This is reflected in PoB’s activity.

According to the Beirut Container Terminal Consortium (BCTC), MSC has restarted work on routes that it had stopped in the past two years. This spiked an increase in the number of transshipments, totaling 407,000 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs).

Total container activity, which includes transshipments, went up 14 percent, to 1.3 million TEUs.

Despite this increase, Port of Beirut revenues remained stable at $240 million. This is partly due to a marginal drop in the volume of merchandise going in and out of the port and an eight percent reduction in the import of vehicles.

Around 6,000 passengers have passed through the port between the months of June and September. This constitutes a 158 percent increase compared to the year before.

Ships continue to grow in size and carry more merchandise. This is why the number of vessels entering the port went down by five percent, to 1,900.