Sri Lanka’s Colombo Port could handle record 8.2mn boxes in 2025
Sri Lanka’s main Colombo Port could handle a record 8.2 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) in 2025 compared to the last year’s 7.78 million TEUs with the West Container Terminal (WCT) also handling containers, Sri Lanka Ports Authority Chairman Sirimewan Ranasinghe said.
“There is a rapid growing in the West Container Terminal handling. It started slowly in April this year, but we see a fast growth in container handling now,” Ranasinghe told EconomyNext on the sideline of Voyage Sri Lanka 2025 summit in Colombo.
“We reached 7.78 million TEUs last year when we had the maximum capacity of 7 million TEUs. So with the new capacity building, we will be able to reach 8.2 million TEUs this year.”
Last year SLPA’s Jaye Container Terminal and the deep water East Container Terminal handled 2.4 million TEUs while China-backed Colombo International Container Terminal (CICT) had handled 3.3 million TEUs. South Asia Gateway Terminal (SAGT) of John Keells Holdings had handled 2.0 million TEUs.
Colombo West International Container Terminal (CWICT), backed by India’s Adani group started operations early this year.
The SLPA had projected the port’s total capacity to double to 15 million TEUs by 2026.
The Colombo Port, Sri Lanka’s premier maritime gateway and one of South Asia’s busiest transshipment hubs, has evolved from a modest colonial-era harbor into a global powerhouse for container handling
Despite a sharp dip during Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis, dropping to around 6.9 million TEUs in 2023 due to global disruptions and domestic turmoil, the port rebounded spectacularly in 2024, fueled by Red Sea shipping reroutes via the Cape of Good Hope, which boosted transshipment volumes (81% of total throughput) by 9.7% to 6.31 million TEUs.
