The World's Largest Port Operators in 2026, Ranked

Ask which company runs the most container terminals on the planet, and the answer changes depending on how you count. At GetTransport.com we book ocean freight across dozens of trade lanes, and one of the first things our team checks is which operator actually runs the quay at each end of a route. That detail quietly shapes reliability, congestion risk, gate paperwork, and how exposed a shipment is to a single point of failure. This guide ranks the world's largest port operators for 2026 using the figures the industry trusts, mostly Drewry's Global Container Terminal Operators report covering 2024. We explain why total throughput and equity-adjusted throughput can crown different leaders. Then we profile the operators at the top and unpack the CK Hutchison ports sale that is still reshaping the map in 2026, so you know who really moves your box.

Here is our 2026 ranking. We lead with equity-adjusted throughput where Drewry publishes it, and we flag where a gross figure tells a bigger story.

How we rank the world's largest port operators

Port operators do not report volumes the same way, so a single league table hides three very different stories. The cleanest way to read our ranking is to hold each metric separately in your head.

The first metric is gross throughput, meaning every container that crosses a quay the operator runs, counted at 100% no matter who owns the terminal. By that measure DP World and Hutchison Ports look enormous, at roughly 110 and 90 million TEU a year. The second metric is equity-adjusted throughput, which Drewry weights by each operator's ownership stake. If an operator holds 40% of a joint-venture terminal, only 40% of that terminal's boxes count toward its total. That single adjustment reshuffles the board, and it is why PSA International sits at the top with about 67 million TEU for 2024 while some bigger-looking names slide down.

A third lens matters just as much to us: network reach, measured in terminals and countries. An operator with 53 ports in 24 countries gives a forwarder more routing options than one with a huge volume concentrated in a home market. Drewry counted 19 companies as global terminal operators in its latest review, and the top seven now handle more than 40% of world port throughput, so scale is concentrating.

The order also shifts with the source. Our table follows Drewry, which puts COSCO second and China Merchants Ports third for 2024. Lloyd's List ran the numbers differently the same year and placed China Merchants ahead of COSCO, at roughly 61 and 54 million TEU. Both houses agree on PSA at the top, and both flag the carrier-backed operators climbing fast, so we treat the second-place battle as too close to call rather than settled.

Total throughput versus equity-adjusted throughput

This is the distinction that trips up most ranking articles, so it is worth slowing down. Gross throughput answers a simple question: how many boxes moved across terminals this operator has a hand in? Equity-adjusted throughput answers a sharper one: how many of those boxes does the operator actually own a slice of? Ports are rarely owned outright. They are joint ventures with shipping lines, sovereign wealth funds, local port authorities, and sometimes rival operators, so a 100% gross number can overstate real economic control by a wide margin.

Global container port throughput reached about 928 million TEU in 2024, up 7.2% on the year, according to Drewry. The global operators grew a little faster than the market and lifted their combined share to roughly 49% of all volume. When you switch from gross to equity-adjusted counting, the Chinese operators stay near the top because they own large stakes at home, while asset-light or joint-venture-heavy players give ground. At GetTransport.com we treat the equity number as the truer measure of who has skin in the game, but we watch the gross number when we care about pure congestion capacity at a specific gateway.

Profiles of the operators at the top

PSA International, headquartered in Singapore, keeps the number one spot on equity-adjusted throughput at about 67 million TEU for 2024, up more than 7% year on year. Its Tuas facility, the world's largest automated container terminal, launched in 2022 and has already pushed past 10 million TEU. Drewry expects PSA to overtake COSCO on raw capacity by 2028.

COSCO Shipping Ports ranks second at roughly 54 million TEU equity-adjusted, growing about 2% from 2023. China Merchants Ports follows at around 51 million TEU. Both benefit from huge home volumes plus a widening overseas footprint tied to China's trade policy. For a shipper moving cargo on the Asia to Europe corridor, one of these two often runs the origin quay.

DP World, based in Dubai, handles roughly 110 million TEU a year on a gross basis and recently lifted its global capacity toward the 100 million TEU mark, yet it slipped out of the equity-adjusted top five in the latest count. Its flagship, Jebel Ali, remains one of the busiest single ports outside East Asia. Hutchison Ports, part of Hong Kong's CK Hutchison, ran 53 ports across 24 countries and moved about 90 million TEU in 2025, which is what makes the sale of that network such a big deal.

The carrier-backed operators are the story to watch, because they are climbing fastest. Terminal Investment Limited, the terminal arm tied to MSC, has grown its equity-adjusted volume by about 47% since 2019 and keeps buying stakes, including the Panama assets pulled out of the CK Hutchison portfolio. CMA CGM's port division lifted capacity from just over 12 million TEU at the end of 2020 to more than 30 million TEU by the end of 2025, an equity-adjusted jump of roughly 55% since 2019. APM Terminals, the Maersk unit, rounds out the leaders with a dense network of around 60 terminals feeding its own ships, and Lloyd's List already shows it pushing past 53 million TEU. The pattern is clear: the lines that own the ships increasingly own the quays.

The CK Hutchison ports sale and why it matters

The biggest story of 2026 is not a throughput figure at all. In March 2025 a consortium led by BlackRock, alongside MSC's terminal operator Terminal Investment Limited, agreed to buy about 80% of CK Hutchison's global ports portfolio in a deal valued near 22.8 billion US dollars. The package covered roughly 43 ports, including 90% of the Panama Ports Company that runs Balboa on the Pacific side and Cristobal on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. Those two terminals sit at one of the most strategic chokepoints in world trade, which is exactly why the transaction became political.

That deal is far from settled. As of mid-2026 it faces a full-scale European Commission investigation tied to the Barcelona terminal, and Chinese authorities have signalled their own review on competition grounds, so the transaction that looked set to redraw the map has not actually closed. The Panama piece has gone further off track. Panama moved to annul the original concessions after its Supreme Court questioned their constitutionality, which effectively voids the permanent sale of those two terminals. The government took interim control, with APM Terminals running Balboa and Terminal Investment Limited running Cristobal for about 18 months while a new long-term concession is tendered. For anyone routing cargo through Panama, the operator on the quay may not be the one that was there a year earlier, and it may change again once the concession is awarded.

What the rankings mean for shippers

Rankings are not trivia for us. The operator behind a terminal changes how a booking behaves in the real world. Here is how we actually use this list at GetTransport.com.

• We check operator concentration on a lane, because if one group runs both ends we lose leverage when a dispute or a slowdown hits.
• We favor gateways run by the higher equity-adjusted operators when reliability matters more than the cheapest rate, since owners invest in their own quays.
• We flag geopolitically exposed terminals, like the Panama pair, and keep a backup routing ready in case control changes hands again.
• We compare network reach when a client needs many origin points, because an operator in 24 or 40 countries simplifies our paperwork and our carrier choices.
• We read the annual Drewry and Lloyd's List tables every year, then adjust which gateways we push volume through for the next season.

If you want the vessel side of this picture, our guide to the biggest container ships and shipping lines pairs neatly with terminal rankings, since the largest lines increasingly own the quays they call at. To see where these boxes actually travel, the breakdown of the world's busiest shipping routes and trade lanes shows why control of a few chokepoint terminals carries so much weight.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the largest port operator in the world in 2026?

By equity-adjusted throughput, the metric Drewry uses, PSA International of Singapore is the largest, at about 67 million TEU for 2024. By gross throughput across all terminals it touches, DP World looks bigger at roughly 110 million TEU, which shows why the metric you pick decides the winner.

What is the difference between gross and equity-adjusted throughput?

Gross throughput counts every container crossing a terminal the operator runs, at 100%. Equity-adjusted throughput counts only the share the operator owns, so a 40% stake in a joint venture contributes 40% of that terminal's boxes. Equity-adjusted numbers are lower but reflect real economic control, which is why the ranking reshuffles when you switch metrics.

What happened to CK Hutchison's Panama ports?

In 2025 a BlackRock-led consortium with MSC's Terminal Investment Limited agreed to buy about 80% of CK Hutchison's ports business, worth around 22.8 billion US dollars and including the Balboa and Cristobal terminals. Panama then annulled the original concessions, which voids the permanent sale of those terminals, and APM Terminals and Terminal Investment Limited took interim control for about 18 months while a new concession is tendered. The wider deal is not finalised either, since as of mid-2026 it faces regulatory reviews in Europe and China.

Why should a shipper care which operator runs a terminal?

The operator sets service reliability, gate technology, congestion recovery, and your exposure to local disputes at that gateway. At GetTransport.com we watch operator concentration on a lane and prefer well-capitalised owners when schedule integrity matters, because a congested or contested terminal can cost more than a slightly higher rate ever would.