The following article was published by ItalyEurope24:

Trieste is the Italian port with the greatest tonnage of goods handled in 2016. Second place goes to Genoa, which on the other hand takes the top spot as a final destination for container traffic. La Spezia is second place on that front, while Gioia Tauro is the first port for Italian transhipment.

For the second consecutive year, Trieste in the northern Friuli-Venezia Giulia region handled a record amount of goods: 59.2 million tons, up 3.68% compared to 2015. A large part of that was made up of liquid bulk goods (42.7 million tons), nevertheless solids also saw considerable growth, passing from 1.6 million to 1.9 million tons (+22.45%).

On the other hand, container traffic declined from 501,000 TEUs (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units) in 2015 to 486,000 in 2016 (-2.94%); traffic linked to the “highways of the sea” (that is those who travel with the ferry and roll-on/roll-off ships), was stable in terms of vehicles in transit (+0.29%).

Zeno d’Agostino, President of the Authority of the Port System of the Eastern Adriatic (Trieste and Monfalcone), noted furthermore: “Trieste reported the national record for transited trains in 2016: 7,631, against 5,900 in 2015.”

Genoa, on the other hand, remains behind in terms of total tonnage, reaching 50.7 million tons, down 1% compared to 2015, due above all to the decline in mineral oils and solid bulk goods. Nevertheless, the port in the Liguria region hit a record for the third consecutive year in terms of containers, which amounted to 2.29 million TEUs, up 2.5% compared to 2015.

Just behind Genoa, in terms of containers reaching their final destination, was another Ligurian port: La Spezia, which registered a total of 1.27 million TEUs (-2.2% compared to 2015). Meanwhile general traffic there amounted to around 14.2 million tons (+1.3%).

In terms of transhipment of containers from big ships to feeders, Gioia Tauro tops the Italian rankings with 2.79 million TEUs, up 9.7% compared to 2015.