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Hong Kong's throughput grows and grows
Hong Kong missed by a whisker logging its fourth one million TEU month in a row in October.
Official port throughput figures, just released, show total throughput for October was 999,217 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEUs).
In July, Hong Kong became the world's first port to handle one million TEUS in a single month and it also surpassed the one million mark in August and September.
The October figures brought Hong Kong's throughput for the first 10 months of 1994 to 9.16 million TEUS. This was a rise of 20.6 per cent over the same period in 1993.
The Secretary of the Port Development Board, Mr Tony Clark, said: "The figures underline the urgent necessity of building additional container capacity in Hong Kong as soon as possible.
"There have been media reports that Hong Kong has enough spare handling capacity to skip Container Terminal 9 on Tsing Yi Island and go straight on to CT10 and 11 on Lantau.
"These throughput figures don't support such an argument. Besides our official total throughput figures, we already know that in the first two months of this year our eight container terminals showed a throughput rise of 19 per cent over the same period last year to total 1.15 million TEUs."
In the first 10 months of 1994, Hong Kong's eight container terminals handled just over six million TEUS, a rise of 26.3 per cent over the same period in 1993. Mid- stream operations accounted for 2.36 million, a rise of just 0.8 per cent. River trade rose by 58.2 per cent to 759,393 TEUs.
Mr Clark said: "To say that Hong Kong has enough spare capacity to handle these throughput increases just ignores the facts."
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'We base our planning for new container terminals on a five-year trigger point mechanism which is established by the Port Development Board and accepted by the government and the terminal operators. According to this five-year trigger point, the first berth of CT9 was required in December last year. The second will be needed in May this year, the third in November and the final berth in May 1996.