More than 37.3 million passengers used Spanish port facilities
Once again, total port traffic reaches a historical maximum with 564.6 million tons handled in 2019
- Increased traffic in natural gas and biofuels has somewhat compensated the coal traffic lost.
02-12-2020 (Ministry of Transportation, Mobility and Urban Agenda). 564,611,193 tons were handled at the 46 general interest State-owned ports over 2019, representing a new historical maximum. During the last decade (2010-2019), port traffic has grown at an average rate of 3%, from 432.5 million tons to the current 564.6 million.
The largest and main groups of cargo have registered an increase, such as liquid bulk: the current figure of 187 million tons was pushed up by +3.5% by natural gas and biofuel traffic; the former increased from 11.2 million tons in 2018 to 15.6 million in 2019, and the latter from 5 million to 6.5 million. General cargo at 274 million also registered a +2.5% increase, encouraged by greater traffic in non-metal mineral (+18%), feed and forage (+14%) or fruit, vegetables and legumes (+8%). However, an 11% loss in solid bulk, down to 90.9 million tons, mainly due to a fall in coal traffic- from 26.4 million tons in 2018 to 17.6 million in 2019- has resulted in total port traffic registering a +0.2% increase in 2019.
Cargo in transit, which go through our ports generally en route to other countries (154 million tons), representing 28% of all handled cargo, increased by 4%; this has placed Spain's ports as one of the main intercontinental connection alternatives. Likewise, ro-ro traffic, cargo-loaded industrial vehicles that use maritime transport as the best option for certain distances, has already exceeded 65 million in transported tons, which means that nearly 3 million industrial vehicles embarked/disembarked at Spanish ports.
In turn, total passenger traffic, both in regular and cruise ship lines, exceeded 37.3 million persons, i.e. a 3.57% increase. Regular line passengers- 26.7 million- increased by 3%, whereas cruise ship passengers- 10.6 million- registered a 4.8% increase.
Finally, the number of ships in transit through our ports increased to 170,467 units, 2% more than in 2018, representing larger ships given that GT (gross tonnage units) totaled 2,391 million, a 3.8% increase.
