The Port of Dover handles up to £122 billion, or 17%, of the UK’s trade in goods. More than 2.6 million lorries used the port last year, carrying exports from British factories and farms to markets in the EU and delivering goods to consumers across the UK. Half the lorries entering the country at Dover are bound for destinations in the Midlands, the North of England, and Scotland.
Thanks to its geographic position on the shortest crossing point between the UK and mainland Europe, the port handles up to 180km of freight traffic each day. That’s a queue from Dover to Stansted Airport in the UK or, in the other direction, across the Continent from Calais almost to the heart of Brussels. It is a mark of the efficiency of the port that this traffic only gets noticed when something, usually in the wider logistics chain, goes wrong. Indeed, lorries have not been parked on the M20 motorway (Operation Stack) since 2015.
Dover handles 120 ferry movements per day: 60 outbound and 60 inbound. Each ferry berths, unloads some 3 kilometres of traffic, embarks another 3 kilometres of traffic, and then sets sail again in just 45-50 minutes. Most of the lorries that arrive every day are out of the port within just five minutes of driving offtheir ferry.