THE EVOLUTION OF DEEP SEA SHIPPING CONTAINER ROUTES CALLING AT ITALIAN PORTS IN THE PANDEMIC PERIOD

In this paper, the resilience of the Italian deep sea shipping (DSS) container routes in situations of severe crisis (in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic), is studied quantitatively, distinguishing gateway and transshipment DSS routes. In addition, DSS container routes in the pandemic period (i.e., from 2020 to 2023), have been compared to those before the pandemic, in particular from 2011 to 2019. The results have shown that while gateway traffic decreased from 2019 to 2023, due to the reduction of the demand connected to the pandemic, transshipment traffic has increased, in contrast to the trend before the pandemic that has shown a considerable reduction from 2011 to 2019. The results also show that the naval gigantism phenomenon increased from 2011 to 2019 but seems to have stopped since 2019. This analysis is highly important in the field of maritime studies, as it covers the two most important phenomena concerning maritime transport that have occurred over the past 10 years (i.e., naval gigantism and the COVID-19 pandemic).