It provides annual statistics on the volume and tonnage of traffic at Northern Ireland major ports.
Latest Results (2023) - Published 28 November 2024
Headline results
The most recent DfT annual statistics relate to ports traffic for January to December 2023 and were published 17 July 2024. When comparing the twelve months to December 2023 and 2022 the DfT statistics show that:
- The total tonnage through Northern Ireland (NI) ports in 2023 was 27.8 million tonnes1, a decrease of 0.4% from the previous year. Total freight traffic through United Kingdom (UK) ports in 2023 was 434.9 million tonnes, compared to 459.0 million tonnes the previous year, a decrease of 5.3%.
- Over the year in NI, the total tonnage of inward traffic decreased by 1.1% to 16.3 million tonnes, and outward traffic increased by 0.5% to 11.5 million tonnes. For the UK as a whole, the volume of inward traffic for 2023 decreased by 4.7% to 290.0 million tonnes and outward traffic decreased by 6.3% to 144.9 million tonnes.
- The majority of total NI traffic came through the Belfast Port (66.3%), while Port of Larne accounted for the second highest level of total traffic (13.9%), followed by 11.3% through Warrenpoint. The most popular UK port was London, which handled 11.9% of total UK port traffic in 2023.
- A total of 917,437 road goods vehicles passed through Northern Ireland ports in 2023 – an increase of 1.8% from 901,270 in 2022. In total, 6.9 million road goods vehicles passed through the UK in 2023 – an increase of 0.3% from 2022.
- A total of 570,114 non-freight vehicles passed through Northern Ireland ports in 2023. This compared with a figure of 583,331 in 2022 – an decrease of 2.3%. In total, 5.1 million non-freight vehicles passed through the UK in 2023 – an increase of 9.3% from 2022.
The Northern Ireland Ports Traffic data will now be available via the new 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