TEU

TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) is the standard unit for measuring container ship capacity and terminal throughput. One TEU is a single 20-foot ISO container; a 40-foot box counts as two TEU. Capacity figures from the around 24,000-TEU HMM Algeciras and MSC classes down to feeder ships are all expressed in TEU, as are annual terminal handling volumes. TEU ignores weight and height, so it is a volumetric slot count rather than a tonnage measure.