The port of Ghent continues its track of record breaking balance sheets with the biggest profit ever generated.
The Ghent Port Company reported 16.6 million € of profit, the biggest profit ever, for 2016. This is 6 million € more than in 2015. The operating result amounted to 8.4[ds_preview] million euros (+6.7 million). The operating income grew (+7.0 million €) to a total of 43.7 million €, »a number that has never before been achieved. Also the turnover (36.2 million €) registered a record«, the port stated.
The largest part – 15.8 million € – of the profit is reserved for co-financing the construction of the New Lock in Terneuzen. Since Ghent Port Company has engaged to paying 15% of the total Flemish contribution to the lock, it has accumulated 40.2 million € in reserve for this in four years’ time.
A decisive, but cautious and sound policy enables Ghent Port Company to steadily go on working on a big financial independence in order to further develop port of Ghent and to finalize the merger investigation.
Ghent Port Company has two important sources of income: concessions and port dues. The concessions are the yields from leasing out land. Ghent Port Company owns one third of the port area and leases these sites to companies. These concessions account for 18.1 million € (+1 million €). They make up 35% of the total income. The port dues comprise 34% of the total income and amounted to 17.8 million € (+1.9 million €).
In 2016, an overall cargo traffic of 51 million tonnes was reported, a growth of 10%. In addition, the start of the year 2017 was very successful, too. A throughput of 14 million tonnes marked the best quarter ever for the port.
