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Displaying items by tag: 118m tonnes Q3

Irish Ports handled 11.8 million tonnes of goods in Q3 of 2023, according to Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures - for the period of July, August and September - a 4% decrease compared with same quarter 2022.

As RTE News reports, the amount of goods forwarded from Irish Ports was 3.8 million tonnes in Q3 last year, while almost 8m tonnes of goods were received.

The CSO figures reveal, when compared with Q2 also of 2023, the total amount of tonnes in goods fell by 3% through the nation’s ports.

During Q3, 2023 the total number of merchant ships (3,130) that arrived to Ireland’s main ports: Bantry, Cork, Drogheda, Dublin, Rosslare, Shannon and Waterford - fell by 2% (3,202) when compared with the third quarter of 2022.

In the capital, the state owned Dublin Port Company, accounted for 61% of all vessel arrivals in Irish ports and 51% accounted in the total tonnage of goods handled over the three-months under review.

The CSO’s Statistics Of Port Traffic results (click here) has shown that Great Britain & Northern Ireland accounted for 38% of the total tonnage of goods handled through main ports by region of trade in Q3, while EU countries made up 40% of total tonnage of goods handled throughout the bloc's main ports.

Published in Irish Ports

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).