Despite this year’s stevedoring strikes in Spain, Puertos del Estado, the national ports authority, has revealed that combined traffic at its 28 ports was up 3.39% to 260.9m tonnes during the first two quarters.
General cargo increased 4.3% to 122.6m tonnes, while liquid bulk grew 4% and dry bulk 2.7%. Ro-ro traffic also grew, by 3.7%, to 28.9m tonnes. Container traffic went up 2.21% to 7.5m teu compared with the first half of 2016.
Valencia, with 2,335,223 teu (-1.62%), was the busiest port for containers, followed by Algeciras, with 2,133,273 teu, although here traffic dropped by 9.4%. In a distant third, Barcelona handled 1,381,029 teu, while Las Palmas reported throughput of 518,049 teu, equivalent to growth of 28.6% and 17.23% respectively.
Transhipment containers grew overall by 2.4% to 3.97m teu, with Algeciras (1.96m teu) in pole position, despite losing 9.87% of its traffic compared with the previous year.
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