Trade Series - Australia Top 30 Ports.
by Steven Randall
Australia has always relied on the sea for it's connections to the rest of the world, and for the vital importing and exporting of goods that causes the country to thrive...
The country produces and exports a very wide variety of goods to our international trading partners, from the range of Agricultural products such as grains, wool and their by products, to the massive mining producers who between them sent overseas nearly 1 billion tons of combined mineral wealth.
Many regional ports like the Western Australian port of Geraldton below...
service diverse range of commodities. Geraldton maintains a large grain export facility servicing the central region of the state, along with significant mineral shipping facilities and Marine Services for the small ships industry.
Over the past ten years the LNG industry in Australia has mushroomed in size and financial importance. There are now seven large LNG production plants active around the country, like the one shown below...
...at Woodside's North West Shelf plant, with it's dedicated port system. LNG from here, and the other production sites is shipped to clients all around the world, and enables Australia's energy trade to have significant influence on the global environmental situation.
The mining industry in Australia is one of the largest in the world, and Australia ships over 700 million tons of Iron Ore to Asian and global clients every year. The World class facilities of Port Hedland, below....
handle Iron Ore, Manganese, Cobalt, and other smaller types of ore. Much of this heavy shipping traffic reaches our Asian clients through the South China Sea; another good reason to keep up with the developments of Chinese operations in this area.
Australia Imports large quantities of many types of products, and the port of Melbourne is one of the main container terminals in Australia...
Manufactured, electronics, clothing and vehicles are just a few of the hundreds of products now being shifted around the globe in the containerization system, and this has made bringing goods to Ozz vastly easier and more efficient.
From the mega ports of Sydney and Melbourne, to the regional grain ports like Geraldton - WA and Port Lincoln - South Australia, all of the 30 key ports around our nation serve a vital economic function.
Next time we will look at the trading colossus to our north - China, and see how we fit into their economic situation.