Doha: Ports in Qatar have started the year on a positive note as container traffic has increased in January. According to the data by Mwani Qatar, the ports handled 110,394 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEU) containers in the first month of this year, compared to 103,996 TEU containers in January 2018. Mwani Qatar manages Hamad Port, Doha Port and Ruwais Port in the country.

These ports received 334 vessels in January this year. They handled 30,693 tonnes of building materials last month compared to 22,641 tonnes of aggregates in January 2018. The ports received 46,764 tonnes of general cargo, 5,749 vehicles and 71,896 heads of livestock, last month.

Hamad Port, the largest port in the Middle East, led from the front as it occupied a lion’s share in monthly traffic.  It handled 109,349 TEU containers and 5,534 vehicles in January.

The ports have delivered an impressive performance last year with all-round growth in all the segments. The ports achieved highest annual performance in containers, vessels and livestock segments in 2018. The ports received 4,781 vessels and handled 1.34 million TEU containers during the year.

The ports also handled 1.4 million tonnes of general cargo; 71,173 vehicles; 324,248 tonnes of building materials and 957,487 heads of livestock in 2018.

Hamad Port witnessed huge rise in vessel and cargo movement in 2018 and achieved several milestones. According to Qterminals, Hamad Port handled around 1.33 million TEU containers, over 1 million tonnes of break bulk cargo, over 255,000 of bulk cargo, over 68,000 vehicles and over 400,000 heads of livestock during January to December in 2018.