Haropa – Port of Le Havre in good shape
Tonnage led the way, the results followed. The port of Le Havre (a member of the Haropa association, which is made up of the ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris), improved its results, having posted a solid throughput in 2018. The group’s turnover increased to EUR 195 million, and its gross self-financing margin rose to EUR 55 million for 2018. The latter has thus tripled in the last five years.
“The increase in traffic since 2017 reflects the increasing activities of the three major shipping alliances, whose business accounts for 76% of our imports and 54% of our exports today,” according to Hervé Martel, who was director general of the port of Le Havre from 2012 to April 2019 and who has now assumed a new post in Marseille.
In view of this favourable financial situation, which corresponds to the alliances’ overall growth in traffic (+2% in 2018), Le Havre has also stepped up its investment programme. The EUR 500 million programme, which was increased by another 100 million as a result of the development of a wind farm project, to bring it to a total of EUR 600 million, includes the extension of berths 11 and 12 in the port of Le Havre, as part of the gateway’s ‘Port 2000’ project. The supervisory board will finalise details in June; the berths are expected to commence operations in around 2023.
Container traffic to and from the hinterland of the port of Le Havre has been growing steadily for ten years (+27.4%). Growth is mainly driven by exports to North America (+54%), Africa (+49%), Southeast Asia (+48%) and Central America (+38%).