Abstract:

Most of the world's freight transportation is made by maritimetransportation. The proportion of container transportation within maritimetransportation shows a constant increase. As it is the case for other maritimetransportation systems, also in container transportation there is an intensecompetition among ports. For that matter, it is essential for the ports to have theinternationally acceptable minimum performance indicators and to be capable ofperforming not only at national, but also at international standards by the natureof the work done, in order to continue operation under such intense competitionconditions.In this study, the year performance, 2011 of nine container terminals(Novorossiysk, Odessa, Varna, Burgas, Batumi, Poti, Ilyichevsk, Constanta andTrabzon) belonging to a total of six countries with coastlines to the Black Sea,which is the largest inland sea, as five countries from the TRACECA (TransportCorridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia) program (Turkey, Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgariaand Romania) and Russia out of the program, have been determined through theapplication of data envelopment analysis (DEA), as a non-parametric method.According to the results of the study, it has been determined that the Poti andNovorossiysk container terminals have been the efficient terminals. On the otherhand, Burgas container terminal has been found out to be the terminal with thelowest performances.

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