UK share of port traffic in Republic declines to 29.4% in first quarter

Britain and Northern Ireland accounted for 29.4 per cent of the total tonnage of goods handled in the seven main ports in the Republic in the first quarter of 2021, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

This compares with 39.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2020. The decline in share reflects a Brexit effect that was also reported in figures published by the Dublin Port Company in April.

Other EU countries accounted for 43.2 per cent of the total tonnage of goods handled in the main ports, an 8.6 percentage point increase compared with the same quarter in 2020.

Goods

Irish ports handled more than 12 million tonnes of goods in the first quarter, down 3.2 per cent on the same quarter the previous year, the CSO said.

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Goods forwarded from the ports amounted to just over 4 million tonnes, while a total of 8.1 million tonnes of goods were received.

The tonnage of goods handled by the main Irish ports increased year-on-year in three of the five traffic categories in the first quarter, but there was a 21.3 per cent drop in the liquid bulk category and a 12.9 per cent drop in roll-on/roll-off traffic.

The statistics agency also said the total number of vessels arriving during the first quarter in the ports increased by 73, or 2.6 per cent, while the gross tonnage of all arriving vessels increased by 5.1 per cent.

Dublin Port accounted for 60.1 per cent of all vessel arrivals in Irish ports and for 46.2 per cent of the total tonnage of goods handled in the first quarter.