Port Of Antwerp Continues Its Excellent Performance With Freight Volume

The port of Antwerp continues its excellent performance, handling 161,671,573 tonnes of freight in the first nine months of this year, up 3.3% on the same period last year. The container volume in the first three quarters came to more than 7.5 million TEU. This represents growth of 4.0%, thus further expanding Antwerp’s market share for containers in the Hamburg-Le Havre range.

Containers and breakbulk

The container volume rose during the first nine months by 3.7%, finishing at 88,639,126 tonnes. In terms of the number of TEU handled the figure came to 7,556,386, an increase of 4.0%.

Port Of Antwerp — Image for representation purpose only

Ro/ro for its part was down by 1.9%, finishing at 3,398,867 after the first nine months. The number of cars handled experienced a slight dip during the month of September, so that the overall growth during the first six months went into reverse during the third quarter, falling by 2% to 894,475 units. The volume of conventional breakbulk on the other hand remained practically the same at 7,266,951 tonnes, just 0.5% down. The steel volume, however, experienced very strong growth, up 15.3% to 5,748,492 tonnes. On the down side increasing containerisation led to a lower conventional volume of paper (down 44.4% to 436,444 tonnes) and fruit (down 26.5% to 377,418 tonnes).

Liquid bulk

The liquid bulk volume rose during the first nine months by 6.7% to 53,103,919 tonnes. As for oil derivatives the nine-month figure was 38,988,139 tonnes, an increase of 10.3%. The volume of crude oil too was up slightly, by 1.0% to 3,407,407 tonnes.

Dry bulk

Meanwhile the volume of dry bulk continues to decline: after nine months the figure stood at 9,262,710 tonnes, representing a fall of 11.6% compared with the same period in 2015). More specifically, negative performance was noted for ores (down 16.9% to 1,477,898 tonnes), fertilisers (down 3.7%% to 2,634,153 tonnes) and sand and gravel (down 20.1% to 1,011,145 tonnes).

Seagoing ships

The number of seagoing ships was up by 1.0%, with the number of calls totalling 10,894 as at 1 October. Not only was there an increase in the number of ships, there was continuing strong growth in gross tonnage. This rose by 11.3% to 301,661,005 GT, demonstrating the trend towards ever larger vessels.

Reference: portofantwerp.com