After “six months of crisis out of seven” from December to June, the activity of the Grand Port Maritime de Marseille-Fos (GPMM) suffered a major halt during the first half of the year, with a 15% drop in its freight traffic, to 33.6 million tonnes instead of 39.5 Mt.

Article in L’Antenne.fr

Container traffic has decreased by 14% in tonnage during the first six months. In terms of number of boxes, the decrease is 17%, to 617,105 TEUs, while the growth of this segment was 6% until November 2019.

Liquid bulk was overall down 13% over six months for some 20 Mt, and which is recovering with the return of consumption and travel, in particular imports of crude and refined products. However traffic for biofuels and LNG (+ 2%) performed well from January to June.

With regard to solid bulk, cereal traffics did well, which increased agro-food bulk by 21%, limiting the losses felt in the dry bulk sector. This will probably not be the case next year. Traffic linked to the steel industry has fallen by 25%, ArcelorMittal Fos having shut down one of its two blast furnaces on March 23.