Waterborne freight in the United Kingdom 2006

The report shows that in 2006:

* Traffic on UK domestic waters accounted for 5% (126m tonnes) of all goods lifted in the UK, and 21% (52 billion tonne-kilometres) of all goods moved.

* Goods lifted on domestic waters fell 5% compared with 2005 and goods moved by 15%. This was largely due to a decrease in oil landed from North Sea oil fields, and reduced coastwise transport of oil.

* Over the decade to 2006, goods lifted on UK waters has fallen by 11% and goods moved by 6%, but there have been fluctuations during the period.

* About three quarters of goods moved is accounted for by crude petroleum and petroleum products.

* Of the total goods moved on UK domestic waters:

– 62% was traffic around the coast

– 35% was one-port traffic (to or from offshore installations, or dredged materials)

– 3% was inland waters traffic (including both non-seagoing traffic and seagoing traffic crossing into inland waters).

* Goods moved on inland waters rose by 3% compared with 2005, while coastwise and one-port traffic fell by 18% and 11% respectively.

* The River Thames was the busiest of the major inland waterways, with 0.76 billion tonne-kilometres of goods moved (45% of the inland waters total, and 1.5% of all waterborne traffic).

Traffic on the River Humber totalled 0.22 billion tonne-kilometres and the River Forth 0.18 billion tonne-kilometres.