July 17 - The port of Antwerp handled 104.5 million tonnes of freight in the first six months of 2015, which is a 6.4 percent increase compared with the same period in 2014. However, breakbulk cargo volumes were down by 3.9 percent.
Despite a large growth in container volume, which rose 9.5 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2015, the volume of breakbulk cargo handled fell to 4.8 million tonnes.
Iron and steel volumes were up 1.3 percent, however, with the port authority putting the breakbulk decline mainly down to a fall in the volume of fruit handled.
Ro-ro cargo handled increased by 3.9 percent to 2.4 million tonnes, although the number of cars handled fell by 9.6 percent to 581,458 tonnes.
