Ports
Ship type
Focus port (fewer ships, bigger ships)
Average vessel size per call
Gross tonnage per arrival (annual GT ÷ annual arrivals), calendar years with all four quarters reported. Select ports above.
Fewer ships, bigger ships
Arrivals (bars, left axis) against average size per call (line, right axis) for the focus port and selected ship type.
Who grew the most
Growth multiple of GT per call, earliest complete year → latest.
Container consolidates, cruise multiplies
EU-27: arrivals and vessel size indexed to 2005 = 100.
The thirty-year ledger
Per port and selected ship type: average size then and now.
| Port | Period | GT/call (start) | GT/call (latest) | Growth | Arrivals (start → latest) |
|---|
Two decades side by side · 2005 → 2024
Average vessel size per call in 2005 (light) against 2024 (dark), every port with complete data in both years, sorted by 2024. The EU-27 aggregate is included: both years are complete for all series shown.
Method. Average vessel size per call = annual gross tonnage
(thousand GT × 1000) divided by annual arrivals, per port and ship type, all size classes
(Eurostat dataset
mar_tf_qm). A calendar year is shown only when the port reported
all four quarters in both units. GT measures ship volume, not cargo carried.Entity changes. Antwerpen and Zeebrugge merged into
Antwerp-Bruges in 2022, and Le Havre and Rouen report as HAROPA from 2022; they are kept as
separate series because the port perimeter changed. The EU-27 aggregate starts in 2005.
Series start years differ by port because national reporting joined Eurostat at different dates.