MILFORD HAVEN MOVES TO 4TH BUSIEST UK FREIGHT PORT

Milford Haven has moved two places up the league table of the UK’s biggest freight handling ports to become the fourth busiest in the United Kingdom.

According to National Statistics figures issued by the Department for Transport and due to be formally confirmed later this year, the West Wales port handled 38.5 million tonnes of cargo during 2004, ahead of Southampton, Liverpool and Dover.

Grimsby and Immingham heads the league table, handling 57.6 million tonnes, followed by Tees and Hartlepool on 53.8 million tonnes and the port of London on 53.3 million tonnes.

Overall, total freight traffic through UK ports rose by 16.4 million tonnes to 572.1 million tonnes in 2004, 3 per cent up on 2003.

Milford Haven Port Authority chief executive Ted Sangster said the port had seen a steady increase in freight traffic in recent years, testimony to the quality of service which was offered.

“Much of our traffic is linked to the oil refineries on our shores, but there are no guarantees of business, and we are still very much in a service-driven environment,” he said.

“The refineries would not continue to invest and be confident in dealing with increased volumes of traffic if the measures we work hard to put in place did not guarantee a safe and efficient passage for the ships which deliver to them.

“It is the ethos which has contributed to the confidence of the LNG suppliers to invest here as well, and we look forward to that new form of cargo continuing to develop the economic prosperity of this area.”

The figures for 2004 are provisional, and will be published in their final form in the annual report, Maritime Statistics 2004, due out in October 2005, which contains detailed statistics of port traffic based on information from thousands of maritime freight movements supplied by several hundred shipping lines or their agents. The information relates to all cargoes loaded or unloaded by ship at each of the 52 major ports in the UK in 2004.