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In 2015, for the first time in its history, the port of Antwerp passed the 200 million tonne mark for the volume of freight handled.

On 31 December, the figure stood at 208,423,920 tonnes of freight handled. That's 4.7% more than the previous year, which ended with a volume of 199 million tonnes.

Another record was broken in the container handling sector, with a volume of more than 9.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), i.e. standard containers. In comparison with 2014, 7.5% more containers were handled.

The growth figures show that Antwerp is performing better than Rotterdam and Hamburg - the first and third container ports in North-West Europe respectively. The Belgian port 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 7.5%, finishing at 9,653,511 TEU. In tonnage, the growth was 4.6%, resulting in 113,294,675 tonnes at the end of 12 months.

Ro-ro volume rose last year by 4.1% to 4,653,351 tonnes, while conventional breakbulk remained at around the same level, up just 1.2% to 10,007,679 tonnes.

Liquid bulk

Liquid bulk volume also finished the year with a growth of 6.1% to 66,668,371 tonnes. The volume of oil derivatives rose by 4.0% to 47,904,167 tonnes. Chemicals experienced particularly strong growth, jumping 18.2% to 13,442,950 tonnes. However, crude oil volume was down slightly last year, ending 2015 with 4,814,047 tonnes (down 3.4%).

During the past year, not only did work go ahead on investments that had already been planned by, amongst others, Total (Optara), ExxonMobil (Antwerup EPC2) and Evonik (expansion of the butadiene and MTBE plants), but new investments were also 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% during the past year, resulting in a volume of 13,799,844 tonnes. The amount of coal handled showed positive figures once more, up 11.8% to 1,585,083 tonnes. More sand and gravel was also handled in 2015, with volume rising by 14.9% to 1,554,290 tonnes.

Seagoing ships

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