If you ship through Batam, the name Batu Ampar is the one that matters. It is the island's main container gateway, and the numbers published over the past year show it becoming something more than a feeder port for Singapore.
How much actually moves
BP Batam reported 501,695 TEUs across its terminals from January to August 2025, up 15% on the year before. The Batu Ampar container terminal alone handled 324,240 TEUs of that - about 65% of the total, and the largest single contribution of any terminal.
The growth continued into 2026. For January to August 2026, Batam's port recorded 542,927 TEUs, an 8.2% increase, against an annual target of 750,000 TEUs. January 2026 alone came in at 67,117 TEUs, 22% above January 2025.
What matters for a shipper is not the headline volume but the second-order effect: more volume means more sailings, and more sailings mean shorter gaps between departures and better odds that your cargo makes the vessel it was booked on.
The real story is direct calls
A direct call is a vessel that comes to Batam instead of asking you to tranship through Singapore first. In January-May 2026, Batu Ampar handled 106 international direct calls, up from 34 in the same period of 2025 - a 212% increase. The cargo carried on those calls reached 58,237 TEUs, up 125% from 25,904.
The carriers behind those numbers show how recent this shift is:
- SITC - 55 calls, 32,266 TEUs.
- Evergreen - 30 calls, 14,792 TEUs.
- Samudera - 11 calls, 7,103 TEUs.
- COSCO Shipping - 10 calls, 4,077 TEUs.
In the same months of 2025, only SITC and Evergreen were running direct calls. Samudera and COSCO arrived in 2026.
The direct network now reaches Shanghai, Ningbo, Shekou, Nansha, Yangpu and Qinzhou in China; Haiphong and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam; Port Klang, Kuantan, Kota Kinabalu and Kuching in Malaysia; Singapore; Laem Chabang in Thailand; Sihanoukville in Cambodia; and Yangon in Myanmar. The terminal operator puts the wider network at 32 international ports, with the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the United States as the next targets.
Why this changes your paperwork
A direct call usually means a direct bill of lading instead of a through bill of lading with a transhipment leg. That is not a cosmetic difference:
- One fewer port where the container can be rolled to a later vessel.
- One fewer set of terminal handling charges, often the part of a quote that is hardest to predict.
- A shorter and more predictable transit time, which matters when you are quoting a delivery date to a buyer.
It also changes insurance. Cargo on a transhipment route spends time sitting at an intermediate terminal, and that is where a surprising share of damage and delay claims originate.
Equipment, depth and capacity
Five ship-to-shore cranes entered service on 1 September 2025, and the terminal operator, PT Batam Terminal Petikemas, is adding six more along with 27 rubber-tyred gantry cranes. Annual capacity has already risen from roughly 350,000 TEUs to about 900,000 TEUs, at utilisation of around 60%, with 1.6 million TEUs targeted by 2028.
The constraint that shaped Batam for years was water depth. Before the basin was deepened, larger vessels could not berth comfortably, so containers were routinely transhipped at Jurong Port in Singapore before continuing their journey. Dredging toward 16 metres below lowest water spring is what allowed the direct calls above to exist at all.
Behind the quay, the terminal now runs B-TOS, a digital terminal operating system, and the wider revitalisation programme is valued at around Rp1.2 trillion, with an Interport and ICTSI consortium replacing the previous operator.
What to check before you book
- Confirm the routing in writing. "Direct call" and "direct service" are used loosely; ask for the vessel name and the port rotation.
- Check the cut-off, not just the sailing date. A direct call has a fixed window; missing it can mean waiting a week rather than a day.
- Ask for the bill of lading type. Direct or through, and whether the freight is prepaid or collect.
- Plan the trucking backwards. Batam traffic around the industrial areas can eat the margin you saved on the sailing.
How ISL Group helps
We book through Batu Ampar daily, for both direct calls and feeder services, and we will tell you when a routing through Singapore is still the better option for your cargo. Send us the volume, weight, destination and required date, and we will come back with the routing, the cut-off and the documents you need.
