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Cargoes

A cargo of JCB excavators at Tilbury (click to enlarge image)

The Port of London handles over 50 million tonnes of a wide range of cargoes every year. These include:

•  unitised consignments (principally containers and lorry trailers)
• sea-dredged and secondary aggregates
• forest products
• crude oil and petroleum products
• sugar
• vehicles and plant
• cereals
• animal feedstuffs
• edible oils and fats
• chemicals
• fertilisers
• cement
• steel and other metals
• containerised refuse

Forest products at Seacon's London terminal (click to enlarge image)

Origins and Destinations

Click here to download "Origins and Destinations", an outline of where some of the cargoes handled in London come from and go to (pdf - 790kb).

Notable Operations

Notable operations within the Port of London include:

• The Port of Tilbury, which by itself is one of the larger Ports in the UK and is the UK's third largest container handler 
• The world's largest sugar cane refinery (Tate & Lyle in Silvertown)
• Tilbury Container Services, handling over 4 million tonnes annually 
• The Petroplus Coryton oil refinery with a capacity of ten million tons
• Europe's largest sea-dredged aggregates terminal (Murphy's Wharf in Greenwich)
• Ford's Dagenham Terminal - a vital link in the logistics chain between all of the company's UK operations and Europe
• CMDR's Ferry Terminals at Purfleet and Dartford offering frequent sailings for trucks and trailers to and from the near continent

Containers heading to London (Click to enlarge image)

For more information about the history and development of containers visit the Container Shipping Information Service website (opens in a new window). 

For more information about the cargoes and operational facilities in the Port of London, please use this Enquiry Form.