It provides annual statistics on the volume and tonnage of traffic at Northern Ireland major ports.
Latest Results (2024) - Published 27 November 2025
Headline results
The most recent DfT annual statistics relate to ports traffic for January to December 2024 and were published 30 July 2025. When comparing the twelve months to December 2024 and 2023 the DfT statistics show that:
- The total tonnage through Northern Ireland ports in 2024 was 28.4 million tonnes, an increase of 2.1% from the previous year. Total freight traffic through United Kingdom (UK) ports in 2024 was 429.7 million tonnes, compared to 435.0 million tonnes the previous year, a decrease of 1.2%.
- Over the year in NI, the total tonnage of inward traffic increased by 4.1% to 17.0 million tonnes, and outward traffic decreased by 0.7% to 11.4 million tonnes. For the UK as a whole, the volume of inward traffic for 2024 decreased by 0.9% to 287.4 million tonnes and outward traffic decreased by 1.8% to 142.4 million tonnes.
- The majority of total NI traffic came through Belfast Port (63.8%), while Port of Larne accounted for the second highest level of total traffic (14.7%), followed by 11.6% through Warrenpoint. The most popular UK port was London, which handled 12.1% of total UK port traffic in 2024.
- A total of 938,784 road goods vehicles passed through Northern Ireland ports in 2024 – an increase of 2.3% from 917,437 in 2023. In total, 6.9 million road goods vehicles passed through the UK in 2024 – an increase of 0.9% from 2023.
- A total of 557,080 non-freight vehicles passed through Northern Ireland ports in 2024. This compared with a figure of 570,114 in 2023 – a decrease of 2.3%. In total, 5.2 million non-freight vehicles passed through the UK in 2024 – an increase of 2.1% from 2023.
The Northern Ireland Ports Traffic data will now be available via the NISRA data portal, which has been designed to enhance the user experience.
The Data Portal will give users the flexibility to slice and dice datasets, run meta-data searches, filter results, plot interactive charts, visualise data over interactive maps, share results and automate processes by reading data via API queries. The outputs follow the Open Data recommendations by providing access to multiple data formats (CSV, JSON-stat, PX, and XLSX).
Current publication and data tables
Archive data
Further information
Evan Elwood
Telephone: (0)28 90816775
Email: evan.elwood@nisra.gov.uk
Twitter: @NISRA