Waterford touted as key to ‘capacity crisis’ as port turnover hits €10.7m

THE Port of Waterford hopes it holds the key to Ireland’s looming capacity crisis in the container shipping industry.

Its large land bank, coupled with its strategic location on the eastern seaboard, close to Britain and mainland Europe, also make it ripe for future development, port bosses say.

The port has recorded another strong trading performance in 2005, handling 2.6 million tonnes during the 12 months to December 31 last, new figures reveal. The Port of Waterford Company now hopes it can help address Ireland’s imminent shipping capacity logjam.

A recent report by the employers’ group IBEC highlighted the risk in coming years of what it called a “major capacity crisis” at Ireland’s ports.

According to IBEC, the volume of unitised trade — which covers goods carried in containers or on truck trailers — will grow by 70% by 2014.

With a substantial land bank zoned for development alongside the existing Waterford Container Terminal site at Belview, the Port of Waterford is ideally positioned to make a significant contribution to addressing the capacity shortfall.

Ben Gavin, Port of Waterford chairman, said: “With the road infrastructure to, from and around Waterford being improved, the case is getting ever more compelling for the Port of Waterford to be the site for what is universally agreed to be urgent investment by the public and private sector in ports capacity.

“We hear a lot about the need to decongest Dublin and to ease the chronic traffic problems in the capital.

“There is a clear advantage to developing our Waterford Container Terminal further in that we are not surrounded by existing commercial and residential development so disruption during construction and operations will be minimised.”

At €10.7m, the Port of Waterford turnover in 2005 was up 5% on the previous year while the operational profit at €4.98m was boosted by non-core activities.

A total of 181,000 lo-lo TEU (20-foot equivalent units) were handled at the port. This represented almost one-fifth of the lo-lo TEUs handled nationally and maintains Waterford’s position as second only to Dublin in terms of units handled.