Spanish Ports Concerned Over Tanger Med’s Growing Prominence

Rabat - Spanish port Algeciras risks losing up to 60% of its container shipments to Morocco’s Tangier Med port. This loss would shrink Spain’s port revenues by up to €300 million and would result in the loss of 1600 port-related jobs, and up to 4600 jobs across the region, according to a Spanish government report.

Rabat – Spanish port Algeciras risks losing up to 60% of its container shipments to Morocco’s Tangier Med port. This loss would shrink Spain’s port revenues by up to €300 million and would result in the loss of 1600 port-related jobs, and up to 4600 jobs across the region, according to a Spanish government report.

President of Spanish state ports Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena warned the government that pursuing green ambitions by seeking to curb emissions will undermine Spanish ports’ competitiveness against major regional ports such as the Tangier Med port, according to Spanish news outlets.

The Tangier Med port is the largest port in Africa and the Mediterranean sea and continues to expand rapidly. Since its inauguration in 2007, the port has been a source of concern for Spain.

One Spanish outlet, El Pais, went as far as to say that Morocco’s Tangier Med has a negative impact on Spanish ports, explaining that Spanish ports “have been losing ground to the Tangier Med” since its inauguration in 2007.

The state-of-the-art port processed roughly 5.8 million twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEU) in 2020, up by 20.2% year-to-year.

Even throughout the economic fallout of COVID-19, the port of Tangier defied international trends and maintained positive growth.

Morocco’s first port at Tangier already contested Spain’s long-standing dominance in the cargo shipping domain.

Following the success of Tangier Med, Morocco announced plans for Tangier Med II, increasing the port’s capacity threefold, from three million to nine million containers annually. Recently, both ports merged into one large port entity named Tangier Med Port Authority.

Meanwhile, construction work for another mega port in the south of Morocco is underway in the city of Dakhla. Once operational in 2026, the port will further enhance Morocco’s competitiveness in cargo shipping.

With Morocco positioning itself as a regional manufacturing hub, the trend is showing no signs of slowing down.