The Dutch Moving Most Maritime Cargo in EU

The Netherlands remained the largest maritime freight transport country in Europe in 2013, while Rotterdam, Antwerpen and Hamburg maintained their positions as the three largest ports, according to figures from Eurostat released by the EU Commission.

The compilation covers the latest statistical data on freight handling and passenger traffic in ports in the European Union (EU), Iceland, Norway, Montenegro and Turkey.

The 20 largest ports accounted for about 38 % of the total tonnage of goods handled in the countries reporting data in 2013. Rotterdam alone accounted for more than 9% of the total tonnage.

The Netherlands has recorded the largest tonnage of maritime freight transport in Europe since 2010. At 548 million tonnes, the volume of seaborne goods handled in Dutch ports in 2013 represented 14.8 % of the EU-28 total. The Netherlands was followed by the United Kingdom and Italy, with shares of 13.5 % and 12.3 % of the EU total, respectively.

Behind these three, Spain remained the fourth largest and France the fifth largest EU maritime freight transport countries. Ports in the candidate country Turkey handled 379 million tonnes of goods in 2013, placing it between Spain and France in terms of total volume of seaborne goods handled in the reporting countries.

The number of passengers passing through EU ports is estimated at close to 400 million in 2013. Italy and Greece remained the leading seaborne passenger transport countries in Europe in 2013, with a combined share of 36 % of the total number of seaborne passengers embarking and disembarking in the reporting countries.

The volumes of goods and passengers passing through EU ports remained more or less stable from 2012 to 2013, with a 0.6 % decrease in the total gross weight of goods and a 0.5 % increase in the number of seaborne passengers, according to Eurostat’s statistics.

Italy maintained its position as the leading seaborne passenger transport country in Europe with more than 73 million passengers embarking and disembarking in 2013, followed by Greece with just under 73 million passengers embarking and disembarking. While Italy recorded a 4.6 % decrease in the number of passengers passing through its ports in 2013, the number of seaborne passengers passing through Greek ports was almost the same in 2012 and 2013.

The total gross weight of goods handled in EU ports is estimated at 3.7 billion tonnes in 2013. Despite the slight decrease in the seaborne tonnage compared with 2012, there are signs of a renewed recovery in EU port freight activity emerging in the third and fourth quarters of 2013. Even so, the gross weight of goods handled in the EU-28 ports in 2013 was still lower than the volumes handled before the economic downturn in Europe in 2009, the report shows.

The number of vessel calls in the main EU-28 ports (excluding French ports) was just below 2.1 million in 2013, a decrease of 3.7% compared with 2012. With the corresponding gross vessel tonnage (GT) falling by 1.6%, the trend towards a slightly larger average size of vessels calling in the EU ports continued. The average size of the vessels calling in EU ports was just above 7 000 GT in 2013, the largest average size of vessels recorded in the statistics.

Eurostat plans to release figures for 2014 in February 2016.

Image: Port of Rotterdam