The Covid-19 pandemic had minimal impact on the volume of trade passing through Northern Ireland’s biggest port last year with Brexit-related stockpiling helping bolster full year numbers.
Belfast Harbour recorded 23.5 million tonnes of cargo in 2020, a drop of just 0.5 million tonnes, and a relatively strong figure in light of the huge disruption to supply chains caused by the pandemic.
The harbour said it noticed significant stockpiling by companies in the last six weeks of 2020 in an effort to counter any disruption to the flow of goods into Northern Ireland when the transition period ended on 31 st December.
READ MORE: {}
That helped the harbour – which operates as one of 100 海角视频 trust ports – to make a pretax profit of £30.1 million on turnover of £62.8 million, a fall of just 3.8% and 4.7% respectively in what was an extraordinary year as a result of the pandemic.
As a trust port, it operates commercially but doesn’t have any shareholders or owners and sits outside the public sector. All surpluses generated by the port are reinvested back into the business for the benefit of its stakeholders and the development of the harbour.
Part of that development has seen the harbour act as a property developer over the last number of years, building a range of office buildings and others on its waterfront land.
The most recent of those is the continued construction of City Quays 3, the 16-storey £50 million investment, which, in its accounts, the habour said will be Northern Ireland’s largest grade A office building when completed in the fourth quarter of 2021. Construction also began on the development of a £25 million office building known as Olympic House which is co-developed with Titanic Quarter.
The harbour also said that a construction tender process is ongoing for the next development phase of Belfast Harbour Studio which received planning approval earlier this year.
Most Read
“In spite of the unprecedented challenges during 2020, Belfast Harbour produced a solid and resilient financial performance,” Joe O’Neill, Chief Executive of Belfast Harbour said. “Initial impacts from Covid-19 were substantially recovered by most trade sectors by the fourth quarter of the year and we are encouraged by the levels of trade seen in the first half of 2021.
“The drop in overall revenues in 2020 largely reflected the impact on tourism and leisure traffic, notably from cruise ships, and partial closure of the AC by Marriott Hotel and NCP car park. It will take some time before our cruise, tourist and leisure activities return to pre-crisis levels but as restrictions on the movement of people and leisure travel are eased we have already started to see more passengers travelling on the Port’s ferry services and a resumption of cruise ship visits.”