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Dunkirk leads French ports fightback

[ January 13, 2017   //   ]

French ports are winning back their natural business and regaining their market share from foreign competitors, the boss of Dunkirk told a press conference in Lille on 12 January.

The port of Dunkirk’s container traffic hit a record 341,000teu in 2016, said chief executive Stefane Raison. At a press conference to announce the northern French port’s annual results, he said that while Dunkirk’s box traffic was low in absolute terms compared with major north-west European competitors, it was growing strongly and up 7% of the n tonnes. year.

Total traffic, including bulks and liquids was marginally up by 0.3% at 46.7 million.

He added that French ports like Dunkirk were regaining their local business base, much of which had been lost to ports in nearby countries like Belgium or the Netherlands. “Big shippers like Auchan want to use local port – it’s shippers who make the choice,” declared Raison. “Traffic is coming back to French ports. We are reconquering our hinterland.”

However, work still needed to be done in this respect, as it took time to change established logistics patterns.

Another factor in Dunkirk’s growth was its ability to offer shipping lines return export loads from local industries like steel to balance import traffic. “There are companies like ArcelorMittal who want to containerise their exports in Dunkirk – and we want to attract more such traffic,” said Raison.

Consultations are meanwhile continuing over long terms plans for new container berths to further extend Dunkirk’s box capabilities, pushing its annual capacity to 2.5m tey by 2045.

Dunkirk’s freight ro ro traffic with the UK had also held up well despite a resurgence in nearby Calais, which had recovered from its severe labour relations difficulties in 2015. Ro ro freight units were 680,000 in 2016, down just 2% on the previous year. The port opened a new ro ro terminal in March 2016.

DFDS’s Dover link is the sole regular service in Dunkirk at the moment but the port had ambitions for further links, added chief commercial officer, Daniel Deschodt. “We would like to launch a service for unaccompanied traffic to the UK,” he told FBJ. “We have the space, we have the terminal – the only question is where, though we believe that the Thames area perhaps has the most potential.”

New ro ro links could tie in with new rail links into the port which are also being developed, perhaps with traffic cross-docked through warehouses here.”

While great uncertainty remained over the outcome of the UK’s Brexit negotiations, he doubted whether it would have much long term effect on Dunkirk’s traffic. “The question is often raised, and we don’t know how it will go, whether there will be customs barriers and so on. But our customer DFDS is still quite confident.”

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