Port of Antwerp - a unique logistics complex

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

The port of Antwerp impresses with its scale. It is the second largest seaport in Europe. First place for Rotterdam. To moor on its berths, huge ocean-going ships are forced to cover a distance of 90 kilometers against the flow of the Scheldt River, which flows into the North Sea. The enterprise itself surprisingly combines modern achievements of science and technology and traditional features. So, on its territory there is a functioning … tavern! It was here that throughout the history of the port the most important trade deals were made, and agreements were backed up by strong whiskey.

General information

The history of the port goes back to the Middle Ages. Even then, at this place, an outgrowth of an impressive size pier, to which ships moored from all over Europe.

The Port of Antwerp is, without exaggeration, a city-forming enterprise. What is there city-forming! He makes a significant contribution to filling the Belgian treasury.

In recent decades, the trend towards an increase in displacement and tonnage of ocean-going ships has only intensified. Modern ships have difficulty navigating the river. The management is forced to spend significant funds on deepening and widening the mouth of the river so that large modern ships can enter the port. The problem is not new. On the one hand, the mouth of the river reliably shelters ships in the port from stormy ocean waves, on the other hand, such a geographical location obliges to regularly clean the bottom of river silt.

In addition, shipowners who send ships to the port of Antwerp incur quite significant expenses for paying for the services of a pilot and tugboats during shunting operations. Nevertheless, the growth rate of cargo turnover demonstrates a positive trend. The company is not experiencing financial difficulties.

The path from the sea to the port's berths is rather thorny, and the fairway itself is a technically complex engineering structure that every resident of Belgium can rightly be proud of. The port of Antwerp is located relatively high above sea level. Therefore, ships must overcome as many as six locks on their way to the long-awaited land for the entire crew.

Port of Antwerp in numbers

If you sum up the length of all marinas and cargo berths, you get about 160 kilometers (!). The services of the port are used not only by large ocean-going ships, but also by ships of a relatively small displacement of the "river-sea" class.

Number of cargo cranes - 387 pieces.

Every year, more than 20,000 ships call at the port from more than eight hundred ports scattered around the world.ball.

According to last year, the port handled more than 158 million tons of various cargoes. The Port of Antwerp is a multifunctional transport hub. It is equipped with everything necessary for receiving and transshipping a wide variety of cargo: containers, liquid cargo (gasoline, oil and oil products), various bulk cargo (mineral fertilizers, various raw materials) and so on.

Center of the oil refining industry

One of the main cargoes of this port is oil and oil products. By the way, four oil refineries have been built right on the territory of the port. The entire Belgian oil refining industry is concentrated in this territory. Everything ingenious is simple. It is the same with these refineries: such a solution makes it possible to increase the efficiency of enterprises by an order of magnitude and reduce the cost of refining by saving on the transportation of crude oil.

The oil refineries themselves are truly gigantic in scale. They are decorated with high pipes, at the end of which flames burn. Surprisingly, the fact is that instead of using the gas produced in the oil refining process for useful purposes (generating electricity, heating water, etc.), it is simply burned.

Transportation and infrastructure

The length of the railway lines intended for servicing the port facilities is more than 1000 kilometers. About 200 freight trains (or 3.5 thousand wagons) enter the port every day.

Thanksdeveloped network of canals, cargo ships and passenger boats from Liège and the Rhine can enter the port of Antwerp along the rivers. Thus, the port occupies a unique geographical position and is a strategically important transport hub for the whole of Europe. So containers from ocean-going vessels can be loaded onto smaller river ships and delivered to the developed industrial regions of Europe - the Ruhr region (Germany), certain territories of France and Switzerland.

Container shipping

Antwerp noticeably squeezed out its competitors in terms of container transportation. Back in 1980, container traffic in Antwerp was only 38 percent of the level of Rotterdam. At present, this indicator is comparable. This was made possible thanks to significant investments and capital injection into the construction of new container terminals. Currently, the container terminals of the port of Antwerp are rapidly increasing cargo flows.