Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit
Also called: TEU · Topic: Infrastructure: Transport, Communications and Energy · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 7 "Physical Infrastructure"
Meaning
The Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) is the standard unit for counting containers. It is based on one standard 20-foot container, which holds about 33 cubic metres. It measures how much a container ship can carry and how much cargo a port handles, which is called its throughput. Because containers come in standard sizes, TEU lets us compare ships and ports anywhere in the world.
Example
A 40-foot container counts as 2 TEU. So a ship carrying 500 twenty-foot boxes and 250 forty-foot boxes carries 1,000 TEU. NCERT's Class 7 figure ranks the world's top container ports for 2024, such as Shanghai and Singapore, by the TEUs they handle.
Don't confuse with
- Tonnage: Tonnage measures cargo by weight. TEU counts containers by their standard size, whatever is inside them.