Passenger traffic continues to increase

During 2022, the number of passengers in Swedish ports increased by 52 percent and is now approaching the levels before the pandemic. Above all, international traffic has increased according to new statistics from Transport analyis.

- For the second year in a row, the number of passengers increased in Swedish ports. Domestic traffic recovered from the pandemic already in 2021, while international traffic had about half of normal flows in the same year. The number of passengers on foreign traffic to and from Swedish ports increased by 59 percent, to 21.7 million in 2022. That is 8 million more passengers than in 2021, says Björn Tano, statistician at Transport analyis.

Among international destinations, travel to and from Finland had the strongest growth, with passenger numbers rising from 3 million to 6 million – however, this is still around 30 percent below 2019 levels. Travel to and from Denmark also rose by 3 million passengers, from 3 million to 6 million.

Among freight transport, which was not hit as hard as passenger traffic by the pandemic, no major differences are noticeable. Total cargo handling amounted, as in 2021, to 168 million tons in 2022. Domestic cargo handling decreased by one million tons, to 22 million tons, while international cargo handling increased by one million tons, to 146 million tons.

As in 2021, the largest unloaded cargo weight in Swedish ports will arrive from Norwegian ports, despite a reduction of 8 percent to 11.8 million tons in 2022. The largest percentage reduction was unsurprisingly for cargo from Russian ports, where the cargo weight decreased by 74 percent. The largest loaded cargo weight from Swedish ports to foreign ports departs for Germany.

Sweden's largest cargo port is Gothenburg, which handles over half of all containerized cargo in tons and number of containers, which is shipped by sea to and from Sweden. The total amount of cargo handled over the quay in Gothenburg's ports amounted to 40 million tons in 2022, which corresponds to 23 percent of the total amount of cargo in Sweden's ports. Of the 40 million tons, 93 percent was handled in international traffic.

To the statistics (in Swedish)