Port seeks deepwater facility operators

Shannon Foynes Port is gearing up to begin recruiting commercial operators to new deepwater facilities.

It is planning to develop the facilities to cash in on a global shake-up in shipping that is expected to result from an increase in the size of cargo vessels.

Their maximum size is likely to jump from 80,000 tonnes to 120,000 tonnes from next year as a result of the deepening of the Panama Canal, the world's most important shipping lane, which will allow shipping companies to use much larger craft.

Shannon estuary is the only Irish port with water deep enough to accommodate such ships and, with the backing of local authorities in Clare, Kerry and Limerick, the port has selected five sites that it believes are suitable for expansion.

Rezoning

Chief executive

Patrick Keating

said yesterday the local authorities were in the process of rezoning the land around the sites for maritime use, and the company had asked

University of Limerick

to help with market research.

“We want to go out and market these sites,” Mr Keating said. “We should be starting that in early 2015.” Shannon Foynes, the local authorities and other agencies have been working on these plans for the last three to four years .

Mr Keating said there were likely to be opportunities in bulk cargos servicing the Irish food industry and possibly trans-shipping from larger vessels docking in Shannon to smaller craft destined for other European ports.

He explained that shipbuilders and shipping companies wanted to take advantage of the economies of scale offered by the larger vessels, but said fewer ports would be able to accommodate them.

He was speaking following the publication of the company’s annual report, which shows operating profits up by a third in 2013 to €4.1 million from €3.1 million in 2012, its fourth year of record growth.

Operating margins

Pretax profits rose 70 per cent to €3.4 million from €2 million. The company had operating margins of 35 per cent. During its busiest year, in 2006, those margins were 5.5 per cent.

Its terminals on the Shannon estuary handled 10.5 million tonnes of cargo, an increase of 2.2 per cent on the previous year.

The figure was 92 per cent of the total handled in 2006.

Mr Keating said the results indicated the company could deliver on its stated target of doubling trade over the next three years.

The State-owned company operates six ports in the Shannon estuary and handles international trade worth over €6 billion a year to the Republic.