This public state–owned company is the 6th of the French great maritime ports. Its mission is to manage the different port sites of the Gironde Estuary, create and develop industrial areas. It employs over 400 employees reaching an annual turnover of approximately M€ 45 and generates some 15,000 salaries on the South-West.
Its regular lines serve, at fixed dates over 300 ports worldwide and its specialized facilities are permanently adapted to the regional economic activities with the support of the State, the Regional Council of Aquitaine, the General Council of the Gironde and Europe. Besides, it has an exceptional real estate (1,500 ha of land available) that enables it to play a powerful attractive role to companies creating jobs and traffic.


During the past years, what was emphasized is reinforcing the performance of the tools (10,000 t/day of solid bulks, 7,000 t/day of corn, 64 burdens/hrs of wood, 25 to 35 containers/hr). In this field, it can boast increasing productivity by 60 % during the last years. The community of the Port of Bordeaux is trying to promote the region’s foreign trade and speak, in favor of intermodality to easing the roads by putting in place alternative routings lorries loaded up to 44 t, full trains, railway shuttles between Bordeaux and the Verdon terminal).
The main axes of its strategy concern maintaining the nautical accesses and continuously improving the handling of goods. At Bassens (development of bulk traffic by continuing to opening the operation to private capital and aiming at the quality/environment certification in dealing with it). At Ambès (strengthening the site as a major southwest petrochemical center). At the Verdon (the development of the containers terminal, setting up a LNG terminal and strengthening its role in the energy field). It also concerns the improvement of profitability of the facility) and implementing a demanding environmental policy.
Regarding the trade and development policy, the Port’s role is having an expertise in setting-up projects by reinforcing the role of private operators, more legitimate to assure the direct contact with the shippers customers and consumers. In this field, one of the most recent successes is given by Lafarge Ciments Group who built a slag crushing unit in Bassens. It produces a potential maritime traffic of 300,000 t/year and uses the railway to send its production to the Toulouse region.


Refocused on its core trade (port, industrial and logistics development), the land policy of the Port of Bordeaux protects its production patrimony whilst combining it harmoniously with natural spaces. A line of conduct which guided the negotiations, with the General Council of Charente Maritime Department and the Littoral Conservatory to transfer the management of banks, marinas and the islands of the estuary (approximately 1,500 ha) and with the city of Bordeaux to carry out the right bank estuary bank park in the very heart of the city.