Antwerp Port Sees Record Volumes in 2015

In 2015 for the first time in its history the port of Antwerp passed the 200 million metric ton mark for the volume of freight handled, by a wide margin. On December 31, the figure stood at 208,423,920 metric tons of freight handled. That’s 4.7 percent more than the previous year, which ended with a volume of 199 million metric tons. Another million metric ton record was broken in the container handling sector, with a volume of more than 9.6 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units, i.e. standard containers). In comparison with 2014, 7.5 percent more containers were handled.

With these growth figures Antwerp said it is performing better than Rotterdam and Hamburg, the N° 1 and 3 respectively in North-West Europe. The port of Antwerp has seen its container volume growing strongly since the beginning of 2015, in particular from Asia.

Containers and breakbulk
The container segment has shown particularly brisk growth both in terms of tonnage and in terms of the number of boxes. In fact the number of containers handled in TEU expanded last year by a good 7.5 percent, finishing at 9,653,511 TEU. In tonnage the growth was 4.6 percent, resulting in 113,294,675 metric tons at the end of 12 months.

The ro/ro volume for its part rose last year by 4.1 percent to 4,653,351 metric tons, while conventional breakbulk remained at around the same level, up just 1.2 percent to 10,007,679 metric tons.

Liquid bulk
The liquid bulk volume also finished 2015 the year with good growth figures, up 6.1 percent to 66,668,371 metric tons. The volume of oil derivatives rose by 4 percent to 47,904,167 metric tons. Chemicals experienced particularly strong growth, jumping by 18.2 percent to 13,442,950 metric tons. Finally the crude oil volume was down slightly last year, ending 2015 with 4,814,047 metric tons (down 3.4 percent).

During the past year not only did work go ahead on investments that had already been planned by among others Total (Optara), ExxonMobil (Antwerup EPC2) and Evonik (expansion of the butadiene and MTBE plants), but also new investments were announced. Invoyn is planning a major investment in a large-scale potassium hydroxide plant that is due to enter production in 2017, while the Japanese company Nippon Shokubai began work several months ago on an investment that will give its Antwerp plant more capacity for production of super-absorbent polymers and acetic acid by 2018. Together, all these investments are significantly reinforcing Antwerp’s position as the largest integrated petrochemical cluster in Europe.

Dry bulk
Dry bulk experienced further growth of 2.2 percent during the past year, resulting in a volume of 13,799,844 metric tons. The amount of coal handled showed positive figures once more, up 11.8 percent to 1,585,083 metric tons. More sand and gravel was also handled in 2015, with the volume rising by 14.9 percent to 1,554,290 metric tons.

Seagoing ships
During the past 12 months a total of 14,417 seagoing ships called at the port of Antwerp, 2.9 percent more than the previous year. The overall gross tonnage also grew considerably in 2015, up 9.7 percent to 367,709,003 GT.

Freight handling jobs
The Antwerp dockers carried out 3.2 percent more freight handling jobs in 2015 in comparison with the previous year. Also there was 22.7 percent less unemployment among them.