Marseilles Fos edges ahead

Cargo handled at Marseilles Fos reached 78.3m tonnes to the end of November, a 3% rise on the first 11 months of 2009, with traffic increasing in all main cargo categories except for oil. The port expects this trend to continue this month (December).

Volumes were growing at 7% until the end of September before suffering from the slowdown in the world economy and strikes over national port and pension reforms being introduced in France.

Container throughput rose 9% to 880,222 teu, although deep sea volumes at Fos were particularly hard hit by strike action – the 12% first-half increase was reduced to 2%. In contrast, intra-Mediterranean trades saw the Marseilles harbour area improve 35% to 229,776 teu.

General cargo gained 9% at 14.5m tonnes (including container tonnage), while ro-ro contributed 3.9m tonnes, a 5% rise based on Tunisian trade and the port’s first-ever Turkey service. Conventional traffic grew 26% to 2m tonnes through exports of steel products.

Dry bulks soared by 42% to 10.6m tonnes on the back of steel industry demand for raw materials, with liquid bulks adding 5% thanks to an upturn in the chemicals industry. However, oil and gas volumes were down 4% due to the combined effects of technical shutdowns, reduced demand and ship calls cancelled calls because of the strikes.
(Source:www.container-mag.com)