Marseilles Fos edges ahead

Volumes were growing at 7% until the end of September before suffering from the slowdown in the world economy and strikes over national port and pension reforms being introduced in France.

Container throughput rose 9% to 880,222 teu, although deep sea volumes at Fos were particularly hard hit by strike action – the 12% first-half increase was reduced to 2%. In contrast, intra-Mediterranean trades saw the Marseilles harbour area improve 35% to 229,776 teu.

General cargo gained 9% at 14.5m tonnes (including container tonnage), while ro-ro contributed 3.9m tonnes, a 5% rise based on Tunisian trade and the port’s first-ever Turkey service. Conventional traffic grew 26% to 2m tonnes through exports of steel products.