Port of Waterford sees increase in goods handled during first quarter

By COLIN BARTLEY

THE PORT of Waterford in Belview, Co Kilkenny handled more cargo in the first three months of this year, than in each quarter of last year.

This amount of goods flowing through the Kilkenny port is likely to grow with the recent announcement of a direct route to Europort Rotterdam, the busiest port in Europe.

In the first quarter of the year, the Port of Waterford handled 505,000 tonnes worth of cargo, up from 498,000 tonnes per quarter in 2018. A steady increase of 1.4% on last year.

The figures released today by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) – Statistics of Port Traffic for Quarter 1, 2019 shows  Ireland imports nearly twice the amount of goods than it exports.

The seven main Irish ports handled 13.2 million tonnes of goods in Q1 2019, an increase of 3% compared with Q1 2018.

Goods forwarded from these ports amounted to 4.4 million tonnes in Q1 2019, while a total of 8.8 million tonnes of goods were received.