Ports: Tangier Med tops the Mediterranean rankings. Who’s up and who’s down among the competitors
Among the seven leading Mediterranean seaports, the Moroccan port holds numerous records. It is hot on the heels of Valencia, which offers the best balance between container throughput and access to the large domestic market. Next come Marseille, Piraeus, Genoa and Trieste
The central hub for freight traffic in the Mediterranean is increasingly shifting towards Morocco. This is borne out by an analysis of data from various studies, which place Tanger Med at the forefront of the ports of the Mare Nostrum, even though Valencia remains the region’s most important container gateway. Lagging behind in terms of traffic volumes (though not exclusively), whilst still retaining characteristics of significant importance, other ports which, in the recent past, have experienced periods of strong growth (but also slowdowns), such as Piraeus in Greece and Trieste in Italia, and others which nevertheless hold important positions in terms of traffic, logistics and the types of goods handled, such as Genoa and Marseille-Fos. Gioia Tauro, which is Italy’s most significant transhipment port (i.e. for transferring containers from larger vessels to feeder vessels) and serves as the MSC Cargo Group’s flagship hub in the country, has instead recorded an increase in traffic but remains a long way behind its Moroccan counterpart.
We have focused our attention on these seven ports, as part of a necessary process of shortlisting (which nevertheless also took into account the other operators in the area), in an attempt to identify the potential port capital of the Mediterranean in 2026. We have taken into account factors such as traffic volumes, connectivity, access to the hinterland, operational efficiency, industrial integration, investment capacity and strategic importance. All this takes place against a backdrop of a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, in which the crises in the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz have led to rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope, longer shipping distances between Asia and Europe, increased bunkering, the reorganisation of ports and volatility in transhipment.
Against this backdrop, Tanger Med, as highlighted in a report produced by the NextMed Observatory – supplemented by figures from SRM (a research centre affiliated with Intesa Sanpaolo) and Assoporti – recorded, in 2025, 11.1 million TEUs (a unit of measurement equivalent to a 20-foot container), representing an increase of 8.3 per cent on 2024, whilst also setting a record of 161 million tonnes of cargo handled, an increase of 13.3 per cent. These records are largely attributable to transhipment, the port’s location at the Strait of Gibraltar – straddling the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean – and its integration with a Moroccan industrial platform designed by the state.
The Tanger Med Group reports over 3,000 hectares of industrial and logistics parks, more than 1,400 companies and an industrial turnover of around 17.4 billion euros in the automotive, aeronautics, textiles, agri-food and logistics sectors. And this marks the difference between a purely transhipment terminal, such as Gioia Tauro, and the Moroccan port, where a growing proportion of traffic is linked to Morocco’s industrial processing and exports, particularly in the automotive sector.
Valencia, on the other hand, serves as a major port for the storage and distribution of containers to the European mainland. In 2025, it handled 5.66 million TEUs (+3.41 per cent) and 80 million tonnes of cargo (-0.75 per cent). Its main target markets are China, Italia and the US. Moreover, via the Spanish port – which last year recorded a 5.56 per cent increase in containerised exports and a 15.55 per cent rise in imports – a larger proportion of containers enters and leaves the economies of Spain and Europe than is the case with Tanger Med. Furthermore, rail connections are on the rise.
