UK ports hit back at Brussels over ETS diversion claims

British ports have challenged European Union claims that shipping lines are diverting container traffic to the UK to escape carbon charges, warning that proposed anti-evasion measures risk penalising billions of pounds of investment in British terminals.

The British Ports Association (BPA) has rejected findings from Spain’s EU ETS Observatory linking rising UK container activity to the bloc’s Emissions Trading System, arguing that new capacity, changing liner networks and commercial competition offer more convincing explanations.

In a new report, the association said around 85% of the UK’s container traffic growth in 2025 was concentrated in London, following the opening of DP World’s £350m ($465m) fourth berth at London Gateway in late 2024.

Government figures show UK ports handled 11% more containers last year, equivalent to an additional 600,000 units. London accounted for roughly 500,000 of those, with its growth driven largely by the additional capacity at London Gateway.

The DP World terminal handled more than 3m teu in 2025, up 52% from 1.9m teu a year earlier. The increase followed the opening of the fourth berth, which boosted capacity by more than a third, and the arrival of Asia-Europe services operated by Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd’s Gemini Cooperation in February 2025.

London Gateway has been challenging Felixstowe’s position as Britain’s busiest boxport, with Maersk’s departure from the Hutchison-operated facility reshaping the country’s container market. DP World is pressing ahead with another £1bn ($1.33bn) expansion, adding two all-electric berths and a second rail terminal.

The BPA argues that such investment and network changes have been overlooked in assessments linking Britain’s expanding container business to EU carbon pricing.

The dispute follows research by Spain’s Puertos del Estado, which found the UK’s share of northern European deepsea shipping activity, measured in teu-miles, rose from 17.5% in 2023 to 32.1% by July 2025. Subsequent analysis put the figure at around 36% in the first quarter of 2026, broadly mirroring declines in Germany and the Netherlands.

The Spanish study also estimated that 76% of observed route changes were attributable to the EU ETS, raising concerns that containerlines were restructuring their networks to reduce carbon costs.

But the BPA has questioned both the methodology and the conclusions. It argues that teu-miles, which combine vessel capacity with voyage distance, measure shipping network activity rather than actual containers handled. The metric can also be distorted by longer voyages around the Cape of Good Hope and changes to the sequence of port calls.

The association also disputes treating the widely cited 76% figure as evidence of carbon-driven diversion specifically to Britain, arguing that the available analysis does not isolate the effects of ETS from alliance restructuring, congestion and new terminal capacity.

Continental European ports have not uniformly lost ground either. Rotterdam’s container throughput increased 3.1% to 14.2m teu in 2025, Hamburg recorded 7.3% growth to 8.3m teu, while Antwerp-Bruges posted a 0.7% increase.

The disagreement comes after the European Commission proposed tightening rules designed to prevent containerships from using neighbouring non-EU ports to reduce their ETS exposure.

Under proposals unveiled in July, certain container ports within 150 nautical miles of an EU port could be excluded from the definition of a port of call for emissions accounting purposes. The threshold for transhipment activity at other qualifying non-EU ports within 300 nautical miles would also be lowered from 65% to 50%.

The changes could bring more British terminals within the EU’s anti-evasion framework, potentially increasing carbon costs for shipping lines using them. The proposals have yet to be adopted.

“It would be extraordinary if the EU responded to that success by introducing new measures to penalise British ports,” said Mark Simmonds, the BPA’s director of policy and external affairs.

The association stressed that it supports shipping decarbonisation but warned against treating normal competition between ports as regulatory avoidance.

Britain has already brought domestic shipping and emissions in UK ports into its own emissions trading scheme from July this year, while plans to extend carbon pricing to international voyages from 2028 are also under consideration.

The BPA has urged the UK government and the European Commission to reassess the evidence before proceeding with measures that could affect port competitiveness and future investment on both sides of the Channel.

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