Morocco’s Port Expansion Challenges Spanish Maritime Dominance

It is the public body Puertos del Estado, in charge of the management of Spanish ports, which is sounding the alarm. Its president, Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena, did not mince his words during a recent visit to Melilla: the Moroccan ports, with Tanger Med as the spearhead, have become "very powerful rivals". The figures speak for themselves: Tanger Med now handles nearly nine million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) containers per year, literally crushing the port of Algeciras, which is nevertheless the leader in Spain, which with Valencia barely reaches five million.

Faced with this increased competition, Rodríguez Dapena highlights the assets of each country. Morocco, with Tanger Med, benefits from a "competitive advantage in terms of price", thus attracting a growing number of shipowners. Spain, thanks to its membership in the European Union, relies on the quality of its services to stand out.

But Puertos del Estado is reassuring and prefers to highlight the complementarity between the Spanish and Moroccan ports. "The emergence" of Morocco generates "complementary traffic", particularly in the "ro-ro" sector, the transport of rolling vehicles. "What we are seeing is that in addition to a rebalancing in the allocation of these container flows, there is an annual increase of around six or seven percent for the past ten or fifteen years in ro-ro traffic, whether in full trucks or semi-trailers, which means that both parties benefit," explains Rodríguez Dapena.