Perhaps the not imminent transfer of the touches of the service intra-Mediterranean Bora Med Service of the French CMA CGM from the port of Taranto to that of Salerno will not mark the end of the presence of the Apulian port in the transport market containerized maritime sector, given that the zeroing of the in this segment of traffic is nothing new for Taranto. However, it is a further confirmation, if there were any need, that the Apulian port is on the extreme edge of this market since 2014, i.e. since the company Taiwanese shipping Evergreen had decided to cancel the intercontinental service calls at the Taranto Container Terminal (TCT) pending the execution of dredging and upgrading of its terminal at the Multi-Sector Pier, limiting the activity to feeder traffic only. TCT, then placed in liquidation and whose concession had been revoked ( of 30 June 2015), was owned by Evergreen itself (40% of the capital), by the terminal operator Hutchison Port Holdings of Hong Kong (50%) and CSI Logistics of the Maneschi group (10%). Back in 1997 Evergreen had decided to make the port of Taranto its Mediterranean port hub, an activity that had become operational in 2001 ( of 19 December 1997 and 2 July 2001). The Evergreen era has ended, the container terminal Pugliese had then passed under the management of the terminal group Turkish Yilport Holding through the San Cataldo Container Terminal which had handled the first containers in mid-2020 ( of 5 July and 8 August 2018, 31 July 2019 and 28 February and 13 July 2020).

Since 2020, the activity of the San Cataldo Container Terminal has never really taken off and at the Multi-sector Pier they are a few thousand containers a year have been handled and so It seems to happen in 2025 as well, which started very badly with a first quarter that ended with only 631 TEU containers, with a decrease of -83.2% on the same period of 2024, and with a second quarter that was archived with just over 4 thousand TEU for 48 thousand tons of containerized goods handled, with decreases of -27.4% and -28.4% respectively over the period April-June last year.

In the second quarter of 2025, however, volumes increased of other goods handled from the port of Taranto, in bulk solid and liquid ones that have recorded increases respectively by +14.5% and +27.8% rising to 1.6 million and 1.1 million million tons. Conventional goods are also on the rise with 612 thousand tons (+48.1%). The total quarterly traffic is state of over 3.3 million tons (+22.8%).

In the first six months of this year, the port of call handled a total of 7.0 million tons of cargo, with an increase of +30.1% over the first half of 2024. The containerized traffic - the port's Achilles heel - has stopped at 53 thousand tons (-34.9%) for almost 5 thousand TEUs handled (-49,0%). Solid bulk cargo is growing with more than 3.6 million tons (+40.9%), liquid bulk cargo with almost 2.0 million tons (+7.1%) and conventional goods with over 1.3 million tons (+53.2%).