Transhipment

Transhipment is the transfer of cargo from one vessel to another at an intermediate hub port before the final sea leg, rather than carrying it on a single direct service. Hub-and-spoke networks built around transhipment ports such as Singapore, Tanjung Pelepas, and Algeciras let mainline ships concentrate on dense trunk routes while feeders serve smaller ports. It adds handling cost and dwell time but improves asset utilization and service frequency to ports a mainline ship would never call at directly.