The Port of Algeciras has rounded off the year with Throughput figures of 107.30-million tonnes (down 1.70%) and 5.1-million TEUs (down 0.40%). These are the most striking overall figures returned by our Port in 2020, which showed a slight increase in General Cargo (up 1.90%), Containerised Cargo (up 1.80%) and HGV Traffic in the Strait of Gibraltar (up 1.60%). Our Throughput figures indicate that the Port of Algeciras actually handles 21% of all traffic that the Spanish Port Network absorbs as a whole. On the opposite side of the scale, however, Passenger Traffic plummeted (down 74.70%), because of the closure of Spain's border with Morocco, effective since March last year. Regards the HGV Traffic figures between both sides of the Strait, 343,777 (up 5.30%) of the total 373,875 HGVs crossed via the Algeciras-Tanger Med line, a link that became strategically important to keep the flow of cargo going between North Africa and Europe in 2020.
As our Port Authority Chairman - Mr. Gerardo Landaluce - emphasized in his review of the year, the Port of Algeciras hopes to repeat these figures in 2021 and - above all - recover the passenger traffic loss suffered by the ports of Algeciras and Tarifa on their lines to Tanger Med and Tangiers City.
As for ship size, Mr. Landaluce reminded us that the scale increase seen in megaships can only serve to strengthen and consolidate the Strait on the world stage, and highlighted the launch of the Megamax Class "HMM Algeciras", which is the largest working megaship at present; along with the regular calls to port of CMA-CGM's newest ship class, powered by LNG.
