United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) releases a quarterly Port Liner Shipping Connectivity Index (PLSCI), giving ports an index-based liner connectivity score.
The following Figure 1 shows a tiered list of ports that are in the top-100 most-connected ports, while the Figure 2 shows a tiered list of ports that are in the bottom-100 for each quarter across 2006-2024.
The top-10 most-connected ports in the fourth quarter of 2024 have seen their average connectivity increase consistently across the analyzed period, which accelerated since 2020, increasing the gap to the next 10 ports considerably. The remaining top segments have all seen increases, but they are relatively marginal compared to the top-10 most-connected ports.
“What this shows is that the most-connected ports are getting increasingly more connected on average,” pointed out Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence, a Danish maritime data analysis firm.
Across each of the analyzed tiers at the bottom of the connectivity index, we see a decline in the average connectivity, spanning most of the analyzed period. So much so that the difference in the average connectivity between each tier in the least-connected 100 ports is now marginal.
Murphy noted, “This trend shown here points to a network setup, which is increasingly reliant on a smaller set of major hub ports, where smaller ports are increasingly relegated to feeder services, reducing their overall liner connectivity score.”
