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Tanger Med takes its toll
03 Jul 2008
The reach of Morocco's Tanger Med behemoth is already being felt across the Mediterranean, with Las Palmas Port reporting a drop in container throughput over the first quarter.
While overall traffic rose 0.7% to 6.5m tonnes, container traffic fell by around 3,500 teu to 351,015 teu for the quarter. In March alone, the throughput drop was in the order of 14.39%, during which 19,000 fewer teu passed through the facility. The following month saw another 1% decrease in traffic to 417,370 teu.
While part of the downturn is certainly due to the weaker economy, speculation suggests that the opening of Tanger-Med has also impacted negatively on the port, which relies almost wholly on transhipment traffic.
