Bordeaux Atlantic Port nominates Europorte to run Verdon Terminal

Bordeaux Atlantic Port has made a decisive step in the re-launch of the Verdon terminal, the deep water port at the entrance to the port of Bordeaux. 

Following a public tender process which attracted four reputable candidates, the port of Bordeaux has chosen Europorte as its preferred candidate to operate the Verdon terminal. The important industrial and logistics platform known as the Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux, is spread along the 110 km of the Gironde estuary. It is situated at a crossroads of land, sea and river routes and is made up of seven specialist terminals. The port handles a wide variety of traffic flows including, cereals, oils, wood, paper, petrochemicals minerals and containers, it handles approximately nine million tonnes of freight each year. 

The public tender process marked an important step in the re-launch of the Verdon terminal, a deep water port that can accommodate the largest ships, and the development of container traffic at the port of Bordeaux in preparation for the anticipated growth in volumes to the wider south west of France. The port of Bordeaux’s ambition, to make the Verdon terminal an efficient high performance deep water port, served by a regular rail shuttle that will link it to the rest of south west France, is starting to take shape. 

Europorte, the rail freight subsidiary of Groupe Eurotunnel, which has already demonstrated its expertise at other French ports¹, shares this ambition and goals and will implement a full logistics chain from unloading ships to running trains. This will enable modal shift from road to the mass transport modes of sea, river and rail across the port of Bordeaux’s hinterland. 

With the completion of the terminal agreement between Europorte and the Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux, the re-launch of the Verdon terminal will now enter a start-up phase, before full scale operations begin. 

¹ Europorte is also present at the Grands Ports Maritimes of Dunkirk, of Nantes Saint-Nazaire, of Le Havre and Rouen and of La Rochelle, and the ports at Paris and Strasbourg