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The port of Algeciras has announced that sales of marine fuels rose by 4.8 percent in 2008 as total throughput and general ship supply volumes also increased.

Bunker sales at the Andalucian port rose by approximately 115,000 tonnes last year from 2.28 million tonnes in 2007 to 2.4 million tonnes in 2008.

The year also closed with improved results for ship supplies overall - a figure which also includes sales of marine fuel - with 3.2 million tonnes of products supplied in total.

Bunker sales in Algeciras have virtually doubled over a period of just over ten years. Volume growth was particularly strong in 2004 and 2005 with sales increases of 6 percent and 9 percent respectively.

Last year, Algeciras reached a total throughput return of 74.8 million tonnes for 2008. This figure is a slight increase of 0.34 percent over the previous year, thanks to the favourable trend in containerized cargo and liquid bulks.

Of the total throughput, 42.7 million tonnes were recorded under containerized cargo (+0.8%), whereas container throughput remained stable at 3,324,310 TEUs, a fall of 2.6 percent, despite import containers increasing by more than 4 percent.

Another sizeable part of total throughput in 2008 corresponded to liquid bulks, reaching 20.5 million tonnes (+5.0%).

The greatest drop in activity was witnessed in solid bulks, with 1.6 million tonnes (-41%), fundamentally due to a fall in coal imports because of the shutdown of los Barrios power station. The power station is undergoing a significant transformation.

Finally, Straits’ crossings returned over 5 million passengers and one-and-a-half million vehicles on the lines linking Algeciras and Ceuta, Algeciras and Tangiers and Tarifa and Tangiers.