Port Life

Southampton’s Container Port spearheaded a £100 million investment earlier in the year so that the biggest container carrying ships in the world could dock here and has just completed a further £40 million dredging programme to deepen and widen the main shipping channels to and from the port.

Success of the port is central to the economy of the city and the southern region, with the port of Southampton supporting around 15,000 jobs and generating around £1 billion a year for the economy.

The investment will allow the biggest ships in the world to enter the port with up to 1.35 km of deep water quays. Already container services connect with 34 ports throughout Asia and there are as many as five weekly calls Connected to 34 ports throughout Asia, including five weekly calls from Hong Kong and Singapore and four weekly calls from Shanghai, as well as a weekly service from India, taking in the ports of Mumbai, Karachi and Dubai. Then there’s a weekly service to North American ports, calling New York, Norfolk and Charleston as well as regular, scheduled feeder connections with Ireland, Scotland and mainland Europe.

They are crucial to the nation's exports as well as incoming imports.

That’s apart from the 745,000 vehicles for export and import shipped through the port a year, bulk cargoes like wheat, metals and aggregates, crude oil, and fresh fruit and produce, not to mention the 1.7 million passengers on cruise ships.

The port operation is round the clock and ships to be profitable need speedy turn round..
This one, the CMA CGM Aquila, in port for just 22 hours and being loaded this afternoon is tonight on her way to her next port of call at Zeebrugge in Belgium.