The port of Santander achieves the best traffic accumulated in its history in the first 11 months of the year

9 Dec 2021
The port of Santander achieves the best cumulative traffic in its history in the first 11 months of the year With 6,095,300 tons, the port of Santander closes the month of November with a record figure, which exceeds that obtained in 2005 when it amounted to 6,060,054 tons and that of 2019, which reached 6,050,405 tons. The president of the Port Authority of Santander (APS) has assured that this year's traffic result has been "spectacular", in line with the "effort made by all operators". Santander 09-12-21. After analyzing the data for the month of November, the president of the Port Authority of Santander, Francisco Martin, today described as "spectacular" the traffic accumulated in the first eleven months of the year and attributed this "great result" to the "effort made by all operators". However, "with the forecasts for the month of December in hand" he considered that it will be "very difficult" to sign the historical maximum of goods and that "if not achieved" will be the "main challenge" of 2022. Martín has expressed his "pride" for the work developed by the port community as a whole, with the Port Authority at the head, and has pointed out that this result is the consequence of "having done things well", despite "having had to live" with a crisis that "has forced us to reinvent ourselves continuously so that the traffic was not affected at any time". The president of the Port Authority has also stressed that these good data give a glimpse of "a promising future" for Cantabria, since the good performance of the port has a "direct" impact on the economy of the region "with almost 13% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP)". In this sense, Martin has assured that the growth of the port "with more goods and new traffic" makes it necessary to continue working on new facilities that involve an investment "of more than 100 million euros for the next 18 months" in works such as the Maliaño docks, the container terminal, the fertilizer terminal, the demolition of the sheds of Antonio Lopez, Raos 9 or Raos 6. Traffic results The APS has obtained, between January and November 2021, 6,095,300 tons, as far as freight traffic is concerned, compared to the 6,060,054 tons that were recorded in 2005, a record year in the history of the port. Of this figure, 3,125,920 tons correspond to solid bulks, 197,714 to liquid bulks and 2,766,600 to general cargo. Within the general cargo, which represents 45.4% of the goods moved through the port, the positive performance of products such as sodium carbonate stands out. On the other hand, sugar or iron and steel products stand out among solid bulk cargoes and molasses among liquid bulk cargoes. As for Ro-Ro traffic (ro-ro), it has gone from 1,929,740 tons in the accumulated to November 2020 to 2,261,845 tons in the same period in 2021, experiencing an increase of 17.2%. Containers, on the other hand, have gone from 22,791 TEUs (20-foot containers) between January and November 2020 to 35,280 registered in the same period of 2021. Comparison with Port Authorities January-October Between January and October 2021, Santander increased its traffic by 17.92% compared to the first ten months of the previous year. This figure is well above the average of the rest of Port Authorities that closed this period with a 5.37 % increase. As for the ports of the northern façade, it is worth mentioning the good performance of the Cantabrian port in comparison with A Coruña, which has had an increase of 7.5 % in this period; Avilés, which has increased by 16.07 %; Bilbao, which has grown by 0.83 % or Gijón, which has risen by 3.71 %. Only Pasajes has exceeded the figure of the Cantabrian port with an increase of 23.71%.