Port of Gioia Tauro

The Port of Gioia Tauro is the largest port in Italy for container throughput, the 9th in Europe and the 6th Mediterranean. Located north of the city of Reggio Calabria, between the municipalities of Gioia Tauro and San Ferdinando, in Calabria, it is close to the East – West route which stretches from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Suez Canal and serves mainly as a transhipment hub, connecting the global and regional networks that cross the Mediterranean.

The port benefits from the natural depth of its water (up to 18 meters) and offers one of the longest linear quays available in the Mediterranean (3.4 kilometers). These characteristics, together with the availability of dedicated equipment (22 Ship-to-shore cranes, reaching up to 23 rows of containers), enable the port to serve simultaneously 4 Ultra Large Container Carriers, a unique feature among Mediterranean ports. The throughput of the port reached 3,467,772 TEUs in 2008, then declined consistently from 2009 to 2011, reflecting the global economic crisis. From 2011 to 2013 the traffic volumes in Gioia Tauro increased, but then fell again between 2013 and 2015, suffering from the difficult conditions of the transhipment market in the Mediterranean and the competition from other major transhipment hubs in Greece, Egypt and Malta.

The port district has a total area of 4,400,000 square meters (440 ha) and it is located in a median position along the coast of the gulf of Gioia Tauro. It has a channel configuration with an internal water surface area of 180 acres, unfolding parallel to the coast. The entrance of the channel has a width of 300 meters and widens into a basin of evolution with a diameter of 750 meters. The port channel unfolds northbound for more than 3 km, with a width ranging from 200 to 250 meters. At the northern extreme of the canal there is a second evolution basin with a diameter of 500 meters. The port has 5,125 meters of docks, of which 3,391 meters along the east side, 814 meters along the north side and 920 meters along the west side. The water depth reaches 18 meters.

The design of the port of Gioia Tauro can be traced back to the political and programmatic situation in Calabria in the early 1970s, in particular the Reggio revolt in Reggio Calabria. To pacify the revolt, Prime minister Emilio Colombo offered to build the Fifth Steelwork Centre in Reggio including a railroad stump and the port in Gioia Tauro, an investment of 3 billion lire which would create 10,000 jobs, which softened the people of Reggio Calabria. This so-called "Colombo package" was developed as a compensatory measure for Reggio Calabria's failure to be designated as the regional capital. The coastal area of the Piana di Gioia Tauro, traditionally cultivated with citrus fruit and olive groves, was identified as the appropriate site for the steel plant. However, the plant was never built, given that steel overproduction made the steel project useless.

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