Goods transport in 2019 down 3% at 244M tons as port tonnage down 6%

The transport of goods in Portugal last year registered a volume of about 243.9 million tons, 3.4% less than in the previous year, the country’s Mobility and Transport Authority (AMT) announced on Monday.

According to the data obtained by AMT, according to information provided by the National Statistics Institute (INE), independent foundation PORDATA and rail operators, domestic traffic accounted for 147.3 million tons, or 60.4% of the total, with 90.8% of that amount going by road.

The bulk of goods transport by rail was also domestic, at 79.2%, although volume here was down 13.2% on recorded in 2018.

As for the international market, maritime transport was the preferred route for goods traffic, with 72.7 million tons in 2019, corresponding to a 75.2% share of total international goods by volume.

Still internationally, road haulage accounted for 22.6% share, mainly due to trade with Spain.

Taking into account only traffic via ports of mainland Portugal, 81.9 million tons of goods were moved, almost 5.1 million tons or 5.8% less than in 2018.

According to the AMT, this overall performance is greatly influenced by developments at the port of Sines, which saw volumes fall by 5.4 million tons or 12.2%; there was also a drop of 253,000 tons in Aveiro, Figueira da Foz, Faro and Portimão, taken together.

Those drops cancelled out the increases seen at the mainland’s remaining ports, especially Leixões and Setúbal, where volumes were up 278,300 and 200,800 tons respectively. Lisbon and Viana do Castelo also added a combined 121,300 tons.

The port of Sines continued to handle the largest share of goods by maritime transport, at 47.5% of the total, although that was down 3.5 percentage points on its share of 2018.

Leixões increased its share by 1.6 points to 21.9%, with Lisbon and Setúbal up 0.8 and 0.7 of a point to 12.8% and 8.2% respectively.

In international traffic, the country for which the largest volume of goods handled at ports in mainland Portugal was undertaken was Switzerland, with a share of 25.2%, followed by Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, with 7.6%, 7.1% and 7.0% respectively (with the ports of Lisbon and Setúbal not included, as they do not provide this information).

In domestic traffic, Portugal remains in first place as the country of registration of operators, with 77.6%, followed by Germany, with 5.7%, Switzerland, with 4.2%, and the Netherlands, with 3.1%.

Liberia is the country where ships are registered with the largest amount of goods transported by sea, accounting for 13.9% of the total, pushing Panama into second place with 13.3% of tonnage.

Last year saw a total of 2.663 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent) handled by ports, down 9.3% on 2018.

According to the AMT, the decline was entirely due to the port of Sines, which saw a decrease of 332,231 TEU, or 18.7%, offsetting the increases seen at the other ports with regular container activity.