#BusyPort – Within the last 48 hours, Drogheda Port will have had nine cargoships that have either docked or lay at anchor, writes Jehan Ashmore.
The busy shipping scene is just a snapshot taken so far in early 2013 and follows the ports handling of more than 1m tonnes of cargo last year.
Export volumes and product types continue to increase as Irish companies seek to export and rely less on the home market. A number of specialist machine and metal fabrication products have recently been shipped from the port.
These nine cargoships have sailed across the Bay of Biscay and as far as the Baltic Sea and carrying a diverse range of imports and exports as outlined below.
Merle which arrived from Passajes, northern Spain with steel, Sergey Kuznetsov, a Russian flagged vessel berthed with bulk-cargo and Amazon Diep laden with timber.
A further three vessels, each loaded with bulk-cargos are the Sagabank, having sailed from Hamburg, Wilson Reef, owned by Norwegian owners and sailed from Rotterdam, while Nephrite had come from further afield having departed Klipeda in Lithuania.
The remaining trio of vessels all with export cargoes are Richelieu, which sailed from Liverpool to load machinery, Arklow Ruler, having transitted the Manchester ship canal, to load bulk cargo and Hohe Bank from Ayr to load fabricated units.
As demonstrated the shipping industry sector involves many ports, varying routes distances and variety of cargoes, not to mention the national backround of the ships themselves.
