Marseille Fos has announced deepsea year-on-year container volume increases of 25% during the first ten months of the year.

The French port handled a total of 589,600teu, with ship calls increasing by 55% to reach 789, although a port spokesman said the figures were affected by the fact that in 2008 normal working was disrupted by industrial action over government port reforms.

However, overall container volumes at Marseille were pegged back by a 35% year-on-year decline in intra-Mediterranean volumes, which fell to 152,00teu.

Ro-ro volumes finished 11% down year-on-year at 3.3m tonnes - largely due to new import restrictions in Algeria - and conventional trades fell 37% to 1.4m tonnes, despite a gradual revival in steel products shipments following the re-commissioning of a local steelworks.