HAROPA Port container throughput up to 3.1 million TEU in 2022
HAROPA PORT has been progressing in 2022 despite a market in downturn, demonstrating resilience, winning additional market share in the Northern Range and improving its modal shares on the Seine Axis, according to the company's release. The port, which began its transformation at the time of the merger in 2021, is now seeing the first significantly positive results with MSC’s decision to invest in reinforcing the Seine logistics corridor.
The ecological and energy transition account for 16% of the port's investments in 2022 and will increase to 19% in 2023. The port is affirming its ambition to create a cutting-edge, decarbonised industrial cluster on the Seine Axis: - As part of a call for project proposals by the French energy and environment agency, ADEME, HAROPA PORT and its three port/industrial zones, working through the non- profits Synerzip – LH, Incase – Industrie Caux Seine and Upside Boucles de Rouen, submitted a joint response for the creation of the ZIBAC project (Zones Industrielles Bas Carbone/Low-Carbon Industrial Zone) on the Seine Axis, a project aimed at fostering development of low-carbon port/industrial zones. The project partners established a provisional list of studies costing over €10m for the preparation of the decarbonisation of industrial and logistics operations.
The largest multimodal platform of the Greater Paris area will soon be producing green energy using biowaste. PAPREC, a company, has been selected to design and operate the future methanisation plant to process household biowaste from the Paris area at the port of Gennevilliers. This plant has a capacity of 50,000 tonnes and, starting in 2025, will generate biogas for injection into the Paris area supply network, in addition to farm fertiliser.
Following the deployment of a network of LNG service stations, a new generation of multi- energy stations will be set up at multimodal platforms in the Paris area at Gennevilliers, Bonneuil-sur-Marne, Limay, Bruyères and Montereau. These facilities will be able to distribute decarbonised hydrogen to meet the needs of road transport, as well as river transport in a later phase.
At the Port-Jérôme port/industrial zone a new industrial cluster – “Plastic Valley” – dedicated to recycling and producing latest-generation renewable plastic is currently being organised, most notably around the projects of Eastman and Futerro. The site will also see production of renewable hydrogen with Air Liquide’s Normand’Hy project, which has an unprecedented capacity of 200 MW.
The decision on the award following the Grand Canal call for project proposals in Le Havre, to be announced during the first quarter of 2023, will come as confirmation of this strategic focus.
In total in 2022, €590m of public and private-sector investment will have been devoted to building this decarbonised industrial cluster.
In 2022, shippers grasped the opportunity to use Seine Axis rail and river transport as an alternative to road for their goods imports and exports: the modal shares of rail and river rose from 12% to 13.3% for containers exiting Le Havre as of end October, and at Paris Terminal SA on the river, inland waterway activity handled increased by 25%, boosted by the launch of new river-based services (Greenmodal/Hapag Lloyd in September 2022 and Fluviofeeder/Marfret in November 2022).
On January 6, HAROPA PORT awarded the Bruyères-sur-Oise terminal to MEDLOG in order to support the implementation of MSC’s investment at Port 2000. This project comprises a trimodal terminal, combining rail and river, dedicated to container services in the Greater Paris region and nearby consumer catchment areas, which should enable a million road journey to be avoided over a ten-year period.
New strategic port infrastructure will enable development of the logistic corridor over the medium term: this is true of PSMO (Port Seine Métropole Ouest/West Metropolitan Seine Port), the construction work for which is to begin in 2023, and the “cat flap” project (Port 2000 direct river access) for which the relevant public consultation process ended today. This direct river connection between the terminals of Port 2000 and Le Havre’s historical port, scheduled to enter into service in 2024, will encourage further expansion of the modal share of river transport along the Seine Axis.
Work on Port 2000 berths 11 and 12 (adding an extra 700m of quay span to the existing 3,500m) will be completed where port infrastructure is concerned and delivered to the operator in 2023 to enable the latter to carry out its own work as required for use of the future terminal.
HAROPA PORT continues to foster innovation and work towards tomorrow’s urban river logistics, as exemplified by IKEA, which has been making deliveries to its Paris customers by river and electric vehicle since last December, thereby avoiding an annual 300,000km of road journeys between its Gennevilliers depot and Paris.
In October 2022, the cities of Le Havre, Rouen, Paris, in conjunction with HAROPA PORT, selected 21 submissions in response to the first call for declarations of interest for the development of decarbonised urban river logistics at 32 locations along the Seine Axis. o On 6 January 2023, following a call for Austerlitz project proposals, HAROPA PORT’s management board selected SOGARIS for the development of a sustainable urban logistics operation that also encourages a mix of site uses and integration of urban ports into the capital city environment.
In 2022 maritime traffic stood at 85.1Mt, an increase of 2% on the back of an exceptional trading year for cereals and a rise in liquid bulk flows.
Container traffic remains at the record level achieved in the previous year, registering throughput of 3.1m TEU, surpassing the symbolic figure of 3m TEU. HAROPA’s market share has progressed in a context marked by a general downturn in container traffic at the Northern Range ports.
Liquid bulk ended the year up 5% (40.1Mt) buoyed by an expansion in crude oil traffic (+23% at 18.8Mt) thanks to the operation at full capacity of the two Seine Axis refineries despite the international context requiring changes in product sourcing.
Dry bulk saw growth of 3% (at 14.2Mt), boosted by a grain trading year up by 12% (8.6Mt). Traffic in aggregates was down by 4 % due to the current situation of certain major construction projects on the Seine Axis, these having entered phases that require less construction work.
Ro-ro traffic fell back by 11% (265,000 vehicles). Adapting to a volatile market, the port switched from an export-led market to one dominated by imports, which required an overhaul of its parking areas.
Cruises stayed on a positive heading with 171 port calls and 301,000 passengers but did not return to their 2019 level. Cruise programming for 2023 points to a level close to benchmark years before the Covid crisis, when there were over 220 port calls and more than 450,000 passengers.
MSC would be investing €700m over the period to 2028 to triple their container volume, making a major port of entry for France and Europe and giving the means to develop river-based services to the Paris basin.
The ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris form the “major Seine Axis river and sea port authority”. As the fourth largest North European port, HAROPA PORT has connections to every continent based on an international maritime offering in the very first rank with calls at nearly 620 ports. It serves an extensive hinterland centred on the Seine Valley and the Paris region, together constituting France’s biggest consumer catchment area. From Le Havre to Paris, the port can point to 2.5m sq. m. of logistics warehousing currently in service and over 1m sq. m. of available warehousing space. HAROPA PORT provides a transport and logistics system capable of proposing holistic, end-to-end and decarbonised service offerings.
