Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

The port theme for this year's European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO) Award on Social Integration of Ports is “Enhancing the port-city relationship by encouraging innovators and local start-ups to be part of the port ecosystem”. This is the award's 12th…

The not-for-profit organisation the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF) is as a source of objective technical expertise in the area of accidental spills of oil, chemicals, and other cargoes and substances in the marine environment. As the federation is…

Associated British Ports (ABP) and Tata Steel have entered a new 10-year agreement in supply of raw materials to integrated steelworks via Port Talbot's deepwater harbour and the export of finished products through the Port of Newport in south Wales.…

Across the Irish Sea an Indian seafarer stranded thousands of miles from home because of the Covid-19 crisis has been able to reconnect with his family thanks to the help of two Liverpool-based maritime organisations. Ecumenical charity Liverpool Seafarers Centre…

Ports in Northern Ireland with physical posts are set for funding ahead of the UK’s exit from the EU, a Stormont committee has been told. According to the Press Association, Junior Minister Declan Kearney told the committee that the Executive had…

Danish shipping group AP Moller-Maersk has today warned of a sharp drop in global container volumes due to the coronavirus pandemic, sending its shares down sharply. The coronavirus epidemic has thrown the global container shipping trade off balance as global…

Bangor Marina on Belfast Lough may be closed but the Harbour is certainly not out of bounds to commercial traffic and the 120-ton displacement tug Coastworker arrived yesterday afternoon. She will tow the modular barge currently berthed alongside the commercial…

Shipping container demand will bounce back relatively quickly as lockdowns are eased worldwide, believes leading digitally driven freight forwarder iContainers, bringing potential new challenges as well as opportunities. “I’m cautiously optimistic that we will see a relatively quick recovery when…

Michel Barnier gave EU ambassadors on Tuesday a downbeat assessment of the negotiations on the future relationship with the UK. The EU's chief negotiator also spoke briefly about the row over the EU having an office in Belfast. As RTE…

Seafarers from the UK of up to 2,000 are stranded on ships around the world because of coronavirus lockdowns, the industry's trade body has told the BBC. The UK Chamber of Shipping wants the UK government to become the first to…

Salvors successfully offloaded the last recoverable cargo from the grounded MV Kaami in western Scotland last Thursday, 30 April. As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the MV Kaami ran aground in the Minch between Skye and Lewis on 21 March, just…

Europe has since 2011 been facing numerous new challenges and has defined new policy ambitions. However, the health crisis the world is facing today risks to radically overturn current realities, assumptions and strategies as the European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO)…

The European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO) regret to inform that they feel obliged to cancel their Conference 2020, which was due to take place in one month in Oslo, Norway. ESPO commented that this was a tough decision but in…

The Irish Exporters Association (IEA) is to host tomorrow (Friday, 24 April at 12 noon) a free webinar with a #COVID-19 update from the UK. The webinar is to focus on business supports and on the resilience of key road…

Work continues at pace to remove cargo from the MV Kaami which ran aground off Skye in western Scotland after sailing from Drogheda Port last month. A further 22 skips of cargo were removed yesterday (Monday 20 April), meaning a total…

Across the Irish Sea from Dublin Port is the Port of Liverpool’s deep water container terminal, Liverpool2 where recently a new record was broken at the north-west England port. The record goes to containership MSC Federica which berthed last month…