Drewry Port Throughput Indices

The Drewry Container Port Throughput Indices are a series of volume growth/decline indices based on monthly throughput data for a sample of over 220 ports worldwide, representing over 75% of global volumes. The base point for the indices is January 2012 = 100.

Drewry’s latest assessment - January 2020

After experiencing a very small increase of 0.7% in October 2019, the Drewry Port Throughput Index declined by over 2% to 128.8 points in November 2019, almost the same level as November 2018.

Almost all regions with the exception of China saw monthly as well as annual declines in November 2019. China was the only region that achieved annual growth (1.3%) in its throughput index, although on a monthly basis it was 1.3% lower than in October 2019. Asia (excluding China) was at the same level as a year ago, but its index was 0.6% lower than in October 2019.

North America saw the largest monthly decline of any region in November 2019. The throughput index was at 134.5 points, 6.7% lower than in October 2019. However the annual decline was much lower at 1.8%. Last year the region outperformed during this period due to fears of a tariff hike which resulted in advance cargo bookings. Latin America’s index was at the same level as in November 2018, but experienced a monthly decline of 3.2% in November 2019.

The throughput index for Africa declined by another 3.6% (3.8 points) in November 2019 but the annual decline was less at 2.9 % (3 points). However, the index figures for Africa are based on a relatively small sample.

The index for Europe was 3.9% lower at 119.2 compared with October 2019. However on an annual basis, the decline was only 0.9%. This is the lowest level since February which itself is usually low because of the effects of the Chinese New Year.

* Note that the index figures for Africa are based on a relatively small sample, and should be viewed with caution

# All index figures for November 2019 are preliminary, subject to change next month