International Cargo Seaport: Laem Chabang Port

Laem Chabang is a port city municipality in Chonburi Province, Thailand. The city is passed by the coastal highway that links two big cities in Thailand, Pattaya, and the capital city Bangkok. The city is also known as the home of the biggest seaport in that country in Southeast Asia, the Laem Chabang Port.

About Laem Chabang Port

Occupying a total of slightly more than 21 square kilometers of the harbor with more than ten square kilometers of land area, the Laem Chabang Port is the largest port in Thailand. The port can be found on the eastern part of the Bay of Bangkok, about 130 kilometers or a three hours drive from the capital city.

The port was built in a particular area with an intention to build the infrastructure outside and away from the crowded city of Bangkok. The location is also closer to the open sea of the Gulf of Thailand, so it is more efficient for vessels.

The History

The Laem Chabang Port complex was started to be developed in 1987, and about three years later, in 1991, the building of the container port of Basin 1 was finished. The construction continued throughout the 1990s.

Furthermore, in 1998, the port was planned to be an international maritime hub, so Basin 2 was developed and constructed that year. There were some additional infrastructures to support the port. Those infrastructures include a Container Freight Station or CFS, and improved highways to connect the port to some major places in Thailand.

The Port Authority of Thailand or PAT has a plan to keep developing the port in the future. The mission is to make the port to be the main container port in that area. The PAT wants the port to have modern technology to make services faster for vessels.

Other than that, a structure that will be able to handle super large vessels with over ten thousand TEUs is also planned to be built in the future. The structure is going to be hugely two thousand meters long and eight hundred meters wide and is going to be U-shaped.

Volume of Transaction in Laem Chabang Port

In 2020, the cargo transaction volume of the Laem Chabang Port was 7.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units or TEUs, making it the fourth busiest seaport in Southeast Asia trailing the Port of Singapore, and two ports in Malaysia, the Port Klang and the Port of Tanjung Pelepas.

Among all of the big seaports, this Thailand’s port was ranked as the twenty-first busiest port in the entire world in 2020. The port was actually ranked one place higher in the year before, 2019, with a cargo transaction volume of 8.1 million TEUs.

Interesting Facts

There are a lot of interesting sights which are close to the location of the Laem Chabang Port. Those interesting sights are a large wooden structure of the Sanctuary of Truth, the family-friendly Sriracha Tiger Zoo, and the Harbor Mall to do some shopping without going far away from the port.