Global Ports container throughput rises in Q3

Results published on 22 October put marine container throughput at the company’s terminals at 280,000 TEU in Q3 2026, up 2.6% year on year. Growth was 1.2% in the Baltic and 5.4% in the Far East. For nine months, throughput fell 4.9% to 795,000 TEU. The company said Q2 and Q3 growth did not offset the Q1 decline caused by severe Baltic ice conditions and a market slowdown.

Far East container throughput rose 16.1% year on year over nine months. Non-containerised cargo fell 20.1% to 4.1 million tonnes, partly as the company reduced coal handling in favour of higher-margin cargo such as fertilisers. Fertiliser handling rose 2.8%, while non-containerised cargo excluding coal increased 0.7%. Management expected handling demand for both cargo types to increase in coming months.

The quarterly and nine-month figures use different comparison windows. Third-quarter throughput of 280,000 TEU was 2.6% above the same quarter a year earlier and 9% higher than in Q2. Yet the January–September total was 795,000 TEU. The company attributed the decline to severe ice conditions in the Baltic and a market slowdown at the start of the year. Growth in the next two quarters did not recover the volume lost earlier.

The regional split shows that the recovery was not uniform across the two basins. In Q3, container throughput rose 1.2% year over year in the Baltic and 5.4% in the Far East; for nine months, the Far East was up 16.1%. Non-containerised cargo fell as the group reduced coal handling and prioritised higher-margin cargo such as fertilisers. Fertiliser throughput increased 9% in Q3 and 2.8% over nine months. Excluding coal, nine-month non-containerised volume grew 0.7%, indicating that the overall decline cannot be read simply as a fall across all cargo categories.

The company said it expected demand to increase in both maritime basins, but did not provide a numerical growth forecast for that expectation. It described its strategic shift in non-containerised cargo as reducing coal volumes while handling more cargo such as fertilisers. The 20.1% nine-month decline therefore is not a measure of port infrastructure capacity or of all Russian foreign trade. It is the company-reported operating volume at Global Ports’ own terminals. Keeping that scope clear helps reconcile the decline in total non-containerised tonnage with growth in some categories and in Q3 containers.