The Importance of Ambarlı Port in Container Handling in Turkey; Forecasting Analysis for the Near Future and the Impact of COVID 19 Pandemic

The global economic crisis that increased due to the COVID-19 Pandemic which deeply affects maritime trade, is expected to grow. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a 4.1 percent decline in maritime trade in 2020. While the COVID-19 Pandemic caused increases in flight cancellations in all cargo groups on a global scale, it brought along falling container demands. The negative effects in container transportation were also reflected in the container ports, and there was a decrease in the amount of cargo handling at the container ports. With the impact of COVID 19, the financial problems of container global freight operators have increased. Despite the decrease in all TEUs handled in Turkey, Ambarlı has been the largest port in terms of TEUs handled in Turkey for the last 10 consecutive years. Therefore, in this study, Ambarlı Port has been chosen for analysis in examining the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Single Exponential Smoothing Method has been used as the analysis method in the study. In this article, due to the importance of container transportation, a future estimation analysis has been carried out in terms of container transportation of Ambarlı port, which has an important place in container handling in Turkey in a constantly changing competitive environment. As a result, there will not be any significant change in TEUs handled by Ambarlı Port in next years.