In 2014, the north-western Spanish port of Vigo handled more than 423,000 finished vehicles, the vast majority of which were exported.
PSA-Citroen accounted for 80% of all automotive traffic in the port, followed by Ford, Renault, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Volkswagen.
Countries where imports from Vigo rose notably were Egypt, Germany, Greece, Italy, Tunisia and the UK. Exports to Germany, in particular, were up 18%, amounting to 33,000 units, while those to Egypt (which included all exports) rose 82% to more than 5,300 units. Greece, where traffic went up by 64%, accounted for 1,400 finished vehicles, while trade with Italy increased by 32% to 21,100 units, virtually all exported.
The UK was also an important trading partner: accounting for 66,000 units, up 37% over the 48,000 units reported for 2013. Finally, traffic with Tunisia rose 17%.
In recent years, Vigo has topped the league for ro-ro traffic on the Iberian Peninsular's Atlantic coastline, from Sines, in Portugal, all the way to Bilbao, close to the French border.
To support that increase in traffic, the port of Vigo now has 500,000 sq.m given over to finished vehicles handling, with five ro-ro ramps. A sixth will enter service shortly. This is a mobile ramp that will mainly be deployed on the reinforced Sea Motorway Service, where a second ro-ro vessel was introduced on January 19th, linking the ports of Vigo, Nantes-St. Nazaire, Le Havre and Algeciras.
One of the first shipments to use this expanded service will be a consignment of around 100 buses, which will be sent from Turkey to Vigo in late January and on to Algeria, where they will arrive in early February.
