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Tanjung Pelepas Shipping Routes — Container Terminals, Transit Times & Tracked Container Lanes

We track container shipments through Tanjung Pelepas (TPP) at the southern end of the Strait of Malacca, across 94 trans-oceanic shipping lanes. Below, the verified data: terminal layout, median transit times, an interactive map of every long-haul route from TPP, and a side-by-side comparison with Singapore on the Shanghai → Rotterdam routings.

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Container Terminals
11
Tracked Berths
94
Trans-Oceanic Routes
51,958
Tracked Containers

Container Terminals at the Port of Tanjung Pelepas

Tanjung Pelepas operates from a single container facility (Pelabuhan Tanjung Pelepas), with the berth positions we observe in our Container Tracking data shown below. We publish only what we can verify directly from observed vessel calls: the largest draft and longest LOA we have recorded, the terminal's central coordinates, and the spatial distribution of tracked vessel positions on the map.

Trans-Oceanic Routes from Tanjung Pelepas

Below are the long-haul shipping lanes (median transit ≥ 10 days) we have tracked from Tanjung Pelepas. Regional intra-Asia feeders are excluded. Each card shows the median container shipping transit time, the 25th–75th percentile range, and the number of tracked containers. Click any card to open the full TPP → destination lane on our route explorer.

Tanjung Pelepas' Global Reach — Interactive Route Map

Every long-haul lane from Tanjung Pelepas on a single map, drawn along its actual sea route. Line thickness reflects how many routes share that lane. Click any destination port for transit-time stats and a link to its port profile. Use the Simulate disruption controls to close the Suez or Panama canals and watch the network re-route in real time.

Simulate disruption
Default routing — all canals open
Tanjung Pelepas (origin) Destination port No-sail zone Lane traffic few → many routes

Shanghai → Rotterdam: direct service vs routing via Tanjung Pelepas

On the Shanghai → Rotterdam lane in our tracked data, most shipments sail direct on a single mainline vessel; a smaller fraction transship through Tanjung Pelepas (TPP). Each bar below stacks the door-to-door journey by stage — gate-in dwell at Shanghai, sailing days, transshipment dwell, gate-out dwell at Rotterdam — so it's visible where the time is spent.

Direct mainline service is one long sailing leg flanked by short gate-in and gate-out dwell. Routing via TPP adds a second sailing leg plus TPP's own transshipment dwell — but the resulting two-leg total comes out close to the direct service in our data. The stacked bars show where the time is in each variant.

Shanghai → Rotterdam: Tanjung Pelepas vs Singapore as the transshipment hub

When a Shanghai → Rotterdam container is transshipped, the two dominant Asian hubs that intercept it are Tanjung Pelepas (TPP) and Singapore. They sit ~30 km apart at the southern end of the Strait of Malacca, but the carrier that owns the box determines which hub it lands in.

In our tracked-shipment data, Maersk's containers that transship in the Strait of Malacca typically pass through Tanjung Pelepas, while MSC's tend to go through Singapore. On Shanghai → Rotterdam specifically, the pattern is sharp: the 91 via Tanjung Pelepas are all on Maersk (91) services and the 82 via Singapore are all on MSC (81) and Maersk (1) services — no carrier in the sample mixes the two hubs on this lane. The direct mainline service on this OD pair is carried by Maersk (1191), MSC (598), and COSCO (29) in our tracked data.

Frequently asked: Tanjung Pelepas container shipping

Quick answers to the questions maritime operators search for, with figures pulled directly from our tracked-shipment data and the simulator above.

What is the actual door-to-door transit time from Shanghai to Rotterdam?

For a direct mainline service (no transshipment), about 48 days end-to-end: 3.0 days at the Shanghai terminal before loading, a 42-day vessel transit, and 3.0 days at the Rotterdam terminal after discharge. When the container is transshipped through Tanjung Pelepas (TPP) on the way, the same journey takes about 49 days — about 1 extra days. TPP routing adds two sailing legs (Shanghai → TPP 8.0d, TPP → Rotterdam 29.2d) plus a 5.4-day stay at the TPP terminal between vessels — but the two-leg total comes out close to the 42-day direct sailing. The stacked-bar chart in the section above shows the two routings side by side.

Shanghai → Rotterdam: routed via Tanjung Pelepas vs via Singapore?

Tanjung Pelepas is the faster route. Via Tanjung Pelepas: about 49 days door-to-door (Shanghai gate-in 3.0d + sailing to TPP 8.0d + TPP dwell 5.4d + TPP→Rotterdam sailing 29.2d + Rotterdam gate-out 3.0d). Via Singapore: about 60 days door-to-door (gate-in 3.0d + sailing to Singapore 10.0d + Singapore dwell 7.0d + Singapore→Rotterdam sailing 37.0d + gate-out 3.0d). The two hubs sit ~30 km apart and handle transshipment in nearly the same time (5.4 vs 7.0 days at the hub itself), so the 11-day gap isn't from the hub. It's the second sailing leg: TPP → Rotterdam takes 29.2 days, while Singapore → Rotterdam takes 37.0 days.

How long do containers spend in Tanjung Pelepas during transshipment?

About 5.4 days. Half of all transshipped containers in our data spend between 3 and 9 days at the Port of Tanjung Pelepas — the time between being unloaded from the inbound vessel and reloaded onto the outbound vessel.

How does transshipment dwell at Tanjung Pelepas compare to Singapore?

The two hubs come out very close. Tanjung Pelepas: 5.4 days (most containers between 3 and 9 days). Singapore: 7.0 days (most between 4–10 days). The hub dwell itself is not where these routings differ — the bigger driver of the door-to-door gap shown in the charts above is the sailing legs, not the time the container spends at the hub.

What are typical port-to-port transit times from Tanjung Pelepas?

Door-to-door times for selected long-haul lanes (gate-in dwell at Tanjung Pelepas + vessel sailing + gate-out dwell at the destination port). Click any destination to open that lane on the route explorer — the same numbers will appear there:
  • Tanjung Pelepas → Rotterdam — about 36 days door-to-door
  • Tanjung Pelepas → Hamburg — about 40 days door-to-door
  • Tanjung Pelepas → Bremerhaven — about 43 days door-to-door
  • Tanjung Pelepas → Algeciras — about 35 days door-to-door
  • Tanjung Pelepas → Salalah — about 29 days door-to-door
For other lanes, click any destination on the map above or browse the route cards in the previous section.

Last updated — numbers, charts and FAQ figures are regenerated automatically every time our shipment-tracking pipeline ingests fresh carrier data.