‘Exceptional growth’ at port despite overall decrease in traffic

The Port of Cork’s container terminals at Tivoli and Ringaskiddy showed “exceptional growth” last year, recording a 13% increase on 2013 and handling in excess of 10m tonnes of cargo.

Chairman John Mullins said the port also took over the running of Bantry last year. He said the performance in the West Cork town and the two Cork terminals was “very encouraging” and remained confident the level of growth will be maintained through 2015 and beyond.

However, overall traffic in both Cork and Bantry experienced a drop of 4% in trade on 2013. Mr Mullins said it was primarily due to unseasonably fine weather in 2014 which saw a reduction of 22% in both animal feed and cereal imports, and that, generally, challenging market conditions affected overall traffic. An improvement in this sector is expected this year.