HAROPA, the port complex of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris, saw a 5% drop in maritime traffic in 2019, with a total of 90 million tonnes of maritime traffic over the year. However, the bulk and container sectors grew by 13% to reach a figure in the Ile-de-France region of more than 25 million tonnes, marking the best figure since 1992.
The drop to solid and liquid energy bulk comes in light of both technical shutdowns on the Seine Valley refining units and the prospect of the end of activity at the Le Havre coal-fired power plant, HAROPA explained.
With very strong growth, river transport on the Seine is reaching record levels. These very positive results demonstrate HAROPA’s ability to catalyse cleaner, more efficient multimodal logistics solutions that find their landing point on our terminals in Ile-de-France. It’s excellent news for the logistical connectivity of Ile-de-France and sustainable development.
…stated Sébastien Hennick, Interim Director General HAROPA – Ports de Paris.
Containers
The overall balance sheet was down 3.5% at 2.9 MTEU. Social movements in December had a strong impact on container traffic and largely account for the 3.5% drop in traffic (down 104 kTEU) compared to 2018.
The other contributing factor is the decline in transshipment (down 72 kTEU; a fall of 9.5% on the transshipment field).
On the other hand:
- the good performance of full hinterland container traffic (stable at 1.7 MTEU): the strong growth of this sector over the first eleven months underlines the gradual expansion of HAROPA’s perimeter beyond its natural borders;
- the increase in mass modes in pre-post container shipments: the river share on the hinterland stands at 8.2% and the rail share on the hinterland is up to 4.7% (compared to 3.8% in 2018);
- increased activity at Le Havre multimodal terminal, confirming the relevance of its services: up 18% with 148 000 TEUs;
- good figures for the Gennevilliers multimodal terminal, which is up 13%.
Solid Bulk
This dynamic (up 3.8% to 14 Mt) is driven by cereal traffic in Rouen (up 9.3% to 8.3 Mt), which shows a record yield and quality; the tonnage of cereals exported through HAROPA ports represents the 2nd best performance of the last 20 years.
These good results are also driven by the record construction traffic in Ports de Paris: up 39% in the cement/clinker sector, linked to work in the Ile-de-France region.
- excluding coal (down 52% mainly due to the shutdown of coal traffic in Le Havre), solid bulk increased by almost 7%.
- the development of the biofuel and biomass segments, which benefit from favourable growth prospects, in line with the challenges of energy transition; traffic in the Wood Energy sector has increased more than 4-fold over one year.
Liquid bulk
A 7.5% reduction is explained mainly due to the closure of the Ile de France pipeline and the Grandpuits refinery from late February to mid-July (detection of an oil leak), as well as the planned shutdown of Total’s refinery in Gonfreville L’Orcher from September to the end of November and the fire declared on 14 December at a pump there.
Excluding crude oil, liquid bulk traffic (including refined products and gaseous hydrocarbons) increased by 2% to 25 Mt.
RoRo
Traffic was down (5.4%). This probably related to the occupancy rate of vehicle storage areas, which has reached 100%, coupled with a change in the operators’ business model; they are carrying out more and more finalisation/customisation work on their vehicles and must therefore absorb a longer average storage time.
Also of note is a larger share of the import business (60%) with storage times of 10 days on average, which impact the terminal’s fill rate.
The port of Le Havre is reorganising in order to gain 7,000 storage spaces and is undertaking extension work (20 ha) to the east of the ro-ro terminal, which will eventually gain 10 000 additional places.
