Port of Antwerp just keeps growing
The port of Antwerp is already a humongous operation, handling millions of tonnes of freight every day. But it’s about to get much bigger
Gigantic ambitions
The claws belong to a container crane, the operators of which are 30m above the water line. The operate these precise clamps that grab the hooks on the corners of containers stacked up to 10 levels below deck in the hold of a ship.
They whisk the containers out of the hold, over the ship’s side and on to the quayside, where straddle carriers – 15m high vehicles nicknamed elephants – wait to lift them up and stack them with thousands of others.
The rate of removal in Antwerp is 42 crates every hour, the highest productivity in Europe. The MSC Katrina has 13,000 containers, all awaiting customers: Even with six working cranes operating throughout the night, those claws will be grasping at the beast’s belly for a few days.
This is what the port of Antwerp does. It loads and unloads millions of containers, which pile up on the quayside like Lego blocks, spreading almost as far as the eye can see. It transfers coal, grain, oil, cars and other essentials of our daily life. It’s the gateway for almost all the stuff that we use, even if we have no idea how it got to us.
Around 90% of everything we buy, from fridges to coffee, from Rice Krispies to toilet paper, from iPhones to Nikes, is carried by ship at some point in its journey to the store. And for you, dear Flanders Today reader, that means it probably passed through the port of Antwerp.
Not done yet
The scale is mind-boggling: Last year nearly 191 million tonnes of maritime freight was loaded and unloaded at Antwerp, making it Europe’s second largest freight port after Rotterdam.
We can make full use of our ecological and economic advantages
When it comes to standard containers, Antwerp handled 8.58 million 20-foot equivalent units (or TEUs, based on 20-foot or 6.1m-long containers), with a total tonnage of 102 million. It handles other stuff, too. Containers are 54% of the total volume, but liquid bulk – mainly oil – accounts for 59.5 million tonnes; dry bulk (like minerals, chemicals or grains) more than 14 million tonnes; conventional break bulk (cargo that must be loaded individually) 10 million tonnes; and roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro, or wheeled cargo, mainly cars) 4.6 million tonnes.
The logistics are such that its operations cover an area of 120 million square metres, which is larger than the city of Paris. And yet the port’s ambition is to grow further: Over the next few years, it will spread up the Scheldt estuary, open up to more and bigger ships, handle millions more containers.
How did Antwerp become such a lifeline, albeit one that is almost invisible to us?
For Eddy Bruyninckx, chief executive of Antwerp Port Authority, it is partly about convenient geography. “We are close to the hinterland, in a tremendously important part of Europe, close to a high density of producers and consumers and close to the origin and destination of cargo,” he says. “We can make full use of our ecological and economic advantages; because the closer you are, the cheaper it is financially and the easier it is on the environment.”
Crucial trade hub
Indeed, the port has been a crucial access point and trade hub for mainland Europe since the late 15th century. Although the open North Sea is about 60km away, the river is so wide and deep that the largest seagoing vessels can dock in the vast port area. Today, 60% of European purchasing power is within a 500km radius of Antwerp.
But the other reason for Antwerp’s role is far-sighted enterprise. Until the 19th century, the port was at the entrance of the city, but the old quays in the Eilandje neighbourhood – long abandoned by industry – are now waterfront chic, decorated with landmarks like the recently opened Red Star Line Museum.
Now all the real port activity takes place in the area between Antwerp city and the Dutch border. Docks and quays have been carved out along the river, providing enormous space for the world’s biggest ships.
As Bruyninckx explains, it is about anticipating future needs. The Port Authority manages and maintains the docks, bridges, locks, quay walls and land. It provides tugs and cranes, carries out dredging work and promotes the port in Belgium and abroad. Every terminal at the port has a tri-modal access, providing fast and efficient road, rail and barge transport to and from the hinterland.
And it gives land, warehouses, covering and quays in concession to businesses, while managing the utility lines and transport connections. Just within the port itself, there are 409km of roads, 1,061km of rail, 350km of pipes and 157km of quays. “It is all about productivity, and we now think of the port as just one part of the global logistics supply chain,” Bruyninckx says.
Serious about security
One of the challenges in recent years has been security. After the September 11, 2024 attacks, a fence was quickly erected between the main road and the port, and ID become very important for the 62,500 people who work in the port every day. (The Port Authority itself has a staff of just 1,650.)
Scanners were used to track cargoes, and security checks became more rigorous. The Belgian authorities check 30,000 containers annually, about 0.32% of the total TEU in the port of Antwerp and find irregularities in 7% of them; sometimes this concerns smuggling, drugs, weapons or counterfeiting, but it is usually just about incorrect descriptions of the goods.
If it looked like the moon when I was younger, today it looks like Mars
Now the port is getting bigger. It is taking over the land once used by carmaker General Motors, which fled Antwerp four years ago after closing its Opel plant. And it is preparing for a new generation of container ships that will dwarf the MSC Katrina.
“The ships are getting bigger and bigger. They are now talking about 22,000 TEU vessels,” says Bruyninckx, who has headed the Port Authority since 1992, during which time it has doubled the total tonnage of freight it handles.
Even last year, the total throughput of 191 million tonnes was up by 3.5% year-on-year, breaking the previous record set before the economic crisis, just over 189 million tonnes in 2008. Part of this was due to the strong growth of liquid bulks, up 30%, thanks to the take-up of new facilities by Glencore and Total, part of Europe’s largest integrated petrochemical cluster.
Massive scale
The port is now three years into a €1.6 billion, 15-year investment plan that includes the development of the Verrebroek dock and Saeftinghe Development Area, port facilities (construction of a second lock on the left bank, dock renovation, modifications to the Canal dock and the Waasland canal), buying new equipment (a suction dredging barge, tugboats, dumb barges, a pusher barge and dock-mounted cranes and mobile cranes) and buildings.
In May, the port announced that MSC – the Swiss-headquartered Mediterranean Shipping Company, the second biggest in the world after Denmark’s Maersk – was to move from its current terminal in the Delwaide dock to the 2.5km Deurganck dock on the left bank of the Scheldt (pictured above), to handle some of its new sea giants. MSC, which accounted for 4.5 million TEU last year, is the port’s biggest container customer.
As a child in 1960s and ’70s, I would go to the locks, and I’d be fascinated
The biggest project in the port is this giant lock, destined to become the largest in the world. Antwerp already has the largest lock in the world, Berendrecht, inaugurated in 1989. The Deurganck lock has the same surface dimensions – 500m between the lock gates, 68m wide – but a depth of 17.8m, compared to Berendrecht’s 13.5m. Due to become operational in 2016 on the Scheldt’s left bank, the Deurganck lock will lead into the Waasland canal.
Costing an estimated €340 million, Deurganck will use three times as much steel as in the Eiffel tower and enough concrete to build a tower 35 floors high and covering an area the size of a football field.
But this is just part of the constant change sweeping through the port. “Every day you see something new,” says Bruyninckx, 63, who grew up near Antwerp. He says the port has always been compelling. “As a child in 1960s and ’70s, I would go to the locks, and I’d be fascinated.
“There were boats coming to Africa and dockers reaching into the crates to throw us oranges. It was like you were on the moon.” He pauses as he tries to describe the scale of the change over the years. “But if it looked like the moon when I was younger, today it looks like Mars.”
Port of Antwerp
barges entering the port daily
companies in the greater port area
tonnes of freight handled in 2012
- Port of Antwerp
- City of Antwerp
- Flemish Port Commission
