Tuesday the 1st of May 2021 saw the birth of a new port complex from a grouping of the ports of Le Havre, Rouen and Paris. All three port authorities have now merged to become the “Seine Axis Major River & Sea Port”. They now form a single port ranking no. 1 in France and fifth among Northern European ports; a port with global outreach.
HAROPA PORT benefits from unique geographical advantages.A maritime coastline open to the whole world and a Seine corridor that serves via natural routes a consumer catchment area (Paris and its surrounding region) with a population of 25 million – the largest in France and the second largest in Europe.
France’s central government has provided this new port complex with massive financial underpinning of €1.45 billion for the years 2021 - 2027 to allow the funding of numerous ambitious projects for development and redevelopment of port facilities. New-generation projects focused on local regions and protective in all cases of the environment and shared resource use.
"HAROPA PORT will give us a higher profile in Europe’s competitive environment and provide a preferential location for new industrial operations generating new jobs. This high level of ambition is founded on winning back market share by offering a benchmark port and logistics system to serve customers and partners in France and overseas” Stéphane RAISON, HAROPA PORT CEO, explains.
Governance
HAROPA PORT has its headquarters in Le Havre. A supervisory board whose members come from central government and local authorities, in addition to qualified public figures and employees, will be driving a vision for the future for the whole of the Seine Axis. It is supported by an orientation council tasked with providing informed input for strategic decisions and taking forward the underlying philosophy of cooperation and coordination. Its local roots, embodied in local government, enterprises based in the port communities and customers, will be preserved by three area management bodies based in Paris, Rouen
and Le Havre. Each of these has a regional development board to represent local interests.
A new brand for a new impetus
The HAROPA – Ports of Paris Seine Normandy, boosted by the creation of an economic interest grouping in 2012, has now taken a further step forward in becoming HAROPA PORT. This development of the brand reflects and illustrates the new entity’s ambitions and strategy: to offer a unique model for a port that is resilient, agile, and sustainable in addressing the issues of the new world. Since 1 June the brand has therefore proudly displayed its new common identity with a logo embodying the concepts of dynamism, fluidity and complementarity, an expression given even greater force with two novel colours of striking effect in the port universe.
HAROPA PORT statistics
Positioning
- • 5th largest port in Northern Europe
- • No. 1 French port for foreign trade
- • No. 1 logistics hub in France
- • No. 1 grain exporting port in Western Europe
- • No. 1 river port in Europe for passenger transport
- River and maritime space
- • Connections to nearly 650 ports worldwide
- • 530km of navigable waterway
- Land and buildings
- • A grand total of over 16,000 hectares of land
- • 2,660 entities on port land
- • Over 2.5m sq. m. of operational warehousing
- • Approximately 5,000 hectares of land reserved for natural habitats
- Attractiveness
- • €7.3bn of value - added generated
- • A consumer catchment area with a population of 25 million: France’s largest consumer market and Europe’s second largest
- • Europe’s leading logistics region
- • 160,000 associated jobs
Image © A26 Architectes