Despite the recent world economic downturn, Port Botany boasts its strongest trade movements on record for a six-month period, the Southern Courier reported.

Almost one million containers passed through Port Botany from July to December last year, compared with 1.784 million containers for the whole previous financial year.

The NSW Ports and Waterways Minister, Paul McLeay, said the continued growth of the main port for NSW was clearly a strong achievement.

The latest figures continued an eight-year growth in trade for Port Botany. "When compared with other ports around the world, Port Botany has proven its resilience in a tough international economic climate," McLeay said.

"Long Beach, California, saw a 14 percent drop in container throughput in 2009 and the world's largest container port, Singapore, suffered a 13 percent decline."

In December 2009, an average of 5600 shipping containers passed through Port Botany every day, which is up 10.6 per cent for the month of December on the previous year.