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The transshipment box that counts twice
Port throughput statistics count a container every time it is lifted. A box that changes ship at a hub can add up to four moves to the totals.
Every few months a port publishes a record throughput figure and a trade journal calls it a vote of confidence in the region. Sometimes it is. More often I want to know how much of the figure is transshipment, because a transshipped box is counted more than once, and the number then says less about local trade than it appears to.
A container arriving at a hub on a large ship, waiting two days and leaving on a smaller ship is lifted off the first vessel and onto the second. Most ports report this as two moves, or two TEU for a 40-foot box.
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