The port of Antwerp has achieved a record freight volume for the fifth straight year in a row. In 2017 the port handled 223.6 million tonnes of freight, an increase of 4.4% compared with the previous year.
The container volume rose in 2017 by 4.3% in tonnage (to 122,969,409 tonnes) and by 4.1% in terms of the number of standard containers to 10.45 million TEU. The last quarter of 2017 scored best in relative terms for the year as a whole, with growth of 7% (in TEU) compared with the last quarter of the previous year. In addition to that there were three months in 2017 (May, August and October) with an absolute record volume of more than 900,000 TEU.
As regards trading routes the most progress was made by North America (up 11.6%), Latin America (up 8.5%) and the Far East (up 7.7%). The USA performed particularly well as a trading partner for Antwerp with 9.7% overall growth in the volume of laden containers, with container imports being up by as much as 10.4%. By contrast in Europe, Antwerp’s biggest trading partner, the port lost volume (down by 3.6%), due partly to the loss of imports for transhipment.
“The favourable economic climate in combination with the big alliances that continue to opt resolutely for Antwerp means that container handling in Antwerp currently has the wind behind it,” Jacques Vandermeiren, CEO of Antwerp Port Authority, explaines. “In the coming years too we expect further growth in the container volume, and so in 2018 we will continue to work hard on providing additional container handling capacity in Antwerp.”
The ro/ro volume rose sharply in 2017, up 10.5% to 5.05 million tonnes. The number of cars handled for its part was up by 4.0% to 1,238,128 units.
Conventional breakbulk also made significant progress in comparison with the previous year. At the end of 2017 the figure stood at 10.3 million tonnes, representing growth of 4.8%. In this segment growth was significantly apparent in imports and exports of iron and steel (up 7.8% to 8.35 million tonnes).
A total of 14,223 seagoing ships called at Antwerp in 2017, a decrease of 1.7% compared with the previous year. On the other hand the overall gross tonnage of these ships rose by 1.4%, to 406,762,315 GT.
