Container Port Rankings vs Your Reality: How To Turn 2026 Indices Into Action

In late 2025, two global container port rankings told very different stories. The new Leading Container Ports of the World report from DNV and Menon Economics crowned Singapore as the top container port, based on a wide set of economic, connectivity, and sustainability indicators. The World Bank and S&P Global’s Container Port Performance Index, which focuses on vessel time in port, put Shanghai at the top of its latest list.

If you run procurement, network design, or key accounts, these headlines can feel distant. Your customers do not ask whether a port is number one on an index. They ask why their box sat in yard for four days, why a feeder connection missed, or why their lead time blew past the agreed service level.

This article looks at what the new container port indices actually measure and how you can turn them into something useful for your 2026 ocean plan. It is written for freight forwarders and cargo owners who want a practical way to use public rankings as early signals, without confusing global averages with their own reality.

1. What The New Port Indices Are Really Measuring

There are now several serious attempts to rank container ports globally. The two most visible right now are the new Leading Container Ports of the World report and the existing World Bank Container Port Performance Index (CPPI). Each has a different purpose and methodology.

1.1 Leading Container Ports of the World (LCP)

The LCP report, published in 2025 by DNV and Menon Economics, benchmarks 160 container ports using 35 indicators grouped into five pillars: enablers, connectivity and customer value, productivity, sustainability, and overall impact. Indicators include throughput, berth productivity, hinterland links, alternative fuel availability, and emissions per TEU, among others.

Global top five in the first edition: Singapore, Shanghai, Ningbo-Zhoushan, Rotterdam, Busan.
Regional leaders: for example, New York and New Jersey in North America, Hamburg in Europe, Tanger Med in Africa, Jebel Ali in the Middle East, and Sydney in Oceania.

LCP is designed to answer a broad question: which ports are best positioned as long term container hubs when you look at infrastructure, connectivity, and green transition together, not just crane moves per hour.

1.2 World Bank Container Port Performance Index (CPPI)

The CPPI is now on its fifth edition and covers more than 400 container ports worldwide. It uses a large dataset of vessel calls and container moves and focuses on total vessel time in port from arrival to departure.

Scope: over 175,000 port calls and hundreds of millions of container moves in the most recent edition.
Core metric: how efficiently ports handle ships, measured as time in port after adjusting for ship size and call characteristics.
Objective: provide a comparable efficiency benchmark for ports and policymakers.

In the latest CPPI release, the Yangshan deep water port serving Shanghai sits at the top of the ranking. Singapore, despite its reputation and role as a global hub, does not appear in the top ten because the CPPI is narrow by design and looks primarily at vessel time in port.

The message is simple. When you see “number one port” headlines, you are usually looking at very different scorecards. One is broader and strategic. The other is operational and ship focused.

2. Where These Rankings Help You, And Where They Do Not

Indices like LCP and CPPI are not marketing fluff. They can be useful if you treat them as decision support instead of final truth.

2.1 How port rankings can be useful signals

They highlight long term investment patterns. Ports that score well on “enablers” and “impact” are usually investing in rail links, automation, and digital tools that reduce bottlenecks over time.
They show where policy attention is focused. High sustainability scores often track with public pressure on emissions and congestion, which can lead to stricter regulations, incentives, or operating rules.
They give context for customer discussions. When shippers ask why you favour one gateway over another, a reputable index provides an independent view of why a port is strategically important.
They help prioritise monitoring. Ports that suddenly move up or down rankings may be worth a closer look in your own data, especially if they sit on critical corridors.

2.2 Where global indices do not match your reality

They mix very different flows. A port’s average performance blends mainline services, feeders, and occasional calls that may not resemble your actual trade lanes.
They cannot see your specific terminal. Many large ports have multiple terminals with very different yard practices, gate systems, and labour agreements. A global index does not know which terminal your boxes usually hit.
They ignore your inland constraints. A port that looks efficient on vessel time can still be painful for your customers if road congestion, customs inspection patterns, or truck appointment systems make last mile delivery unreliable.
They look backwards. Rankings are built on historical data. If you only react to last year’s index, you may be one season behind current bottlenecks.

The strategic players are making ten year port bets. Your job is to turn those long horizon signals into six to eighteen month decisions about procurement, routing, and service design that make sense for your own network.

3. A Simple Checklist For Reading Port Rankings In 2026

When a new port index or ranking drops, you do not need a full benchmarking study every time. You do need a way to move quickly from headline to a few concrete questions.

Question 1: Are our key ports moving up or down

Start by marking your top origin and destination ports in the ranking. You do not need to worry about the full list of 160 or 400 ports. Focus on the handful that matter most for your ocean spend and service promises.

If a port that is central to your network ranks consistently high on connectivity and productivity, that is a signal that its role as a hub is likely to endure.
If a port that you depend on is sliding in efficiency rankings or scoring poorly on enablers, you should at least scenario plan what happens if congestion or restrictions increase.
If emerging ports in your sourcing or sales regions are suddenly ranked as strong performers, they may be worth testing in RFPs or as alternative gateways.

Question 2: What story do our own shipments tell about those ports

Indices are averages. Your own shipment data tells you how those ports behave for your specific mix of carriers, services, and commodities.

Measure your actual vessel time in port for your main services on that gateway, not just the index average.
Look at container dwell and gate out times by port and terminal. A port that looks fine on ship efficiency can still give you long yard delays.
Track rolled bookings, missed transhipments, and cut off changes by gateway, not just by carrier.
Compare on time performance and delivered lead time against what you promise customers.

If your internal data tells a very different story from a global ranking, your data should win. The index is a starting point for questions, not the end of the conversation.

Question 3: Do we need to adjust routing guides, contracts, or monitoring

Once you have combined external indices with your own shipment history, you can decide if action is needed. Some practical options include:

Routing guides: promote or demote specific gateways based on consistent performance, not just habit.
Carrier allocation: adjust volume allocations on services that consistently perform better or worse on key ports.
Contract language: update expectations on schedule reliability, cut off times, or free time on ports that show structural improvements or risks.
Monitoring: set tighter alerts and exception dashboards on gateways that look fragile, so local teams can react faster when yard or berth utilisation spikes.

The goal is not to chase every ranking change. The goal is to use them to decide where you need more detailed analysis and where your current setup is already working.

4. Illustrative Example: When A New Ranking Challenges Your Default Hub

This example is illustrative, not a recommendation for any specific port pair.

Imagine you are a mid sized European shipper with strong Asia import flows. For years, you have routed most Far East volumes through a single North European gateway because of historical contracts and cross dock facilities.

The new indices show that another regional port has climbed several places, driven by investments in deeper berths, better rail connectivity, and improved productivity. At the same time, your internal data shows a gradual increase in yard dwell and truck turn times at your current main gateway during peak weeks.

You do not abandon your primary port on the basis of one ranking.
You do run a small controlled test, for example shifting one product group or one customer to services landing at the improved port for a quarter.
You compare door to door lead time, reliability, and cost between the two options using your own visibility data.
You use those findings in your next procurement round to negotiate either better service commitments at your current hub or more formal allocations via the alternative gateway.

In this way, the index is less about the headline and more about prompting a specific experiment that you can measure.

5. Build Your Own Port Performance Index From Shipment Data

Ultimately, the indices that matter most are the ones you build from your own operations. A practical internal port scorecard does not need dozens of indicators. It does need to reflect what your customers actually feel.

Door to door lead time: average and spread, not just port to port transit.
Schedule reliability: how often shipments arrive within the window promised to customers.
Port and terminal dwell: days between discharge and gate out, split by gateway and carrier.
Exception rate: percentage of shipments that require manual intervention because of holds, missing documents, or rebooking.
Cost volatility: exposure to congestion surcharges, storage, and trucking premiums at each gateway.

If you have standardised event data across carriers, you can calculate these metrics per lane, per port, and per customer segment. That becomes your internal container port index, tuned to your trade mix instead of global averages.

Where TRADLINX Fits In This Picture

External rankings can tell you where capital and policy are moving. Your own shipment data tells you how those choices land in your network. The challenge is to turn scattered carrier events and terminal updates into a consistent picture.

TRADLINX Ocean Visibility focuses on standardising ocean events across carriers so that logistics teams can compare gateways on a like for like basis. Teams can track by bill of lading, container, booking, or vessel, then roll up performance at the port and lane level.

See key milestones such as departure, arrival, discharge, and gate out on a single timeline.
Measure dwell and lead time consistently across different ports and carriers.
Feed those events into your existing TMS, FMS, ERP, or data warehouse for deeper analysis.
Build lane and gateway scorecards that reflect how your shipments actually behave, not just how a port performs on average.

In the end, the only container port index that matters is the one that reflects your truth and your customer’s truth. Public rankings can help you decide where to look. TRADLINX exists to help you build the index that comes from your own shipment data, not from global averages.

References

DNV and Menon Economics, New Global Report Ranks Top Container Ports Worldwide, November 2025, detailing the inaugural Leading Container Ports of the World (LCP) report benchmarking 160 global container ports using 35 indicators across five pillars: enablers, connectivity and customer value, productivity, sustainability, and overall impact.
Splash247, New Container Port Index Launches, November 2025, comparing DNV-Menon LCP report with World Bank Container Port Performance Index (fifth edition, September 2024).
World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence, The Container Port Performance Index 2020 to 2024, fifth edition (2024 data), published September 2024.
Shipping Telegraph, Asia Leads the Way in New Survey for Top Container Ports, November 2025, reporting on DNV-Menon Leading Container Ports of the World inaugural edition rankings.

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