Antwerp volumes down by 19% in first nine months of 2009

“Volumes seem to have stabilised in the past few months,” explains CEO Eddy Bruyninckx. “In the third quarter the amount of cargo has remained the same, and we suspect that this trend will continue for the remainder of the year. At the moment there are not enough signs for an economic revival in the last quarter of 2009.”

Container volumes dropped by 5.4m teu or18.4% in the period January-September 2009. Bulk freight fell by 16.2% to 42m tonnes, conventional/breakbulk volumes declined by 37.8% to7.9m tonnes with sharp drops in steel (down 44.5%) and wood pulp and paper (down 52.1%) and ro-ro volumes fell by 29.9% to a total of 2.4m tonnes.

“In the meantime, the Port of Antwerp is getting ready for the economic revival,” said Bruyninckx. “Regular calls by the very largest container carriers of 14,000 teu have been approved by the Permanent Commission for Supervision of Scheldt Navigation. The test calls by these vessels have been judged successful, and so we can now introduce a more flexible schedule for sailing up and down river, to and from Antwerp.”