Figures by Iran Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO) show loading and unloading operations at ports located south and north of the country soared by nearly 10% in the four months to July 22 against similar period last year.
A senior PMO official said that loading and unloading at 22 Iranian ports had picked up by 9.8% in the first four months of the current calendar year to a total of 46.18 million metric tons.
Ravanbakhsh Behzadian, who serves as PMO’s head of ports affairs, said loading and unloading of petroleum products including crude at Iranian ports had soared by 22.7% to 17.46 million tons in late July this year.
Behzadian said the amount of liquid bulk cargoes handled at the ports had increased by nearly 40% to 1.47 million tons while general cargo handling surged by 25.3% to a total of 6.89 million tons over the same period.
Loading and unloading of dry bulk and container cargoes had declined slightly compared with the four months to July 2020, said the PMO official.
He said the figures were related to operations in 22 major Iranian ports, including five trade gateways on the Caspian Sea in northern Iran which mostly process Iran’s trade with Russia and other former Soviet Union countries.
Shahid Rajaee Port, Iran's trade hub
Over half of Iran’s commercial trading is carried out at Shahid Rajaee, which is located 23 kilometers west of the port city of Bandar Abbas, the capital of Hormozgan Province.
With 12 wharfs, Shahid Rajaee is Iran’s biggest container port, accounting for 90% of the country’s total container throughput. Container loading and unloading in Shahid Rajaee Port in southern Iran stood at 267,702 TEUs during the first two months of the current Iranian year (March 21-April 20).