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Trading Places

Royal Seaforth Dock History

Active Period - 1960s to present

1960s

Building begins for Royal Seaforth Dock. The drained land and planning permission had been obtained almost 60 years before.

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1972

Royal Seaforth Dock opens. It has:

  • a very irregular octagonal basin in a 500-acre site
  • ten specialised berths
  • container, grain and timber terminals. These can receive ships of up to 70,000 tons

Today this is still the newest Liverpool dock [image, new window].

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1984

Seaforth becomes Britain's first fully active Freeport. It attracts businesses because:

  • it has 11-acres of secure space
  • imported goods can be stored and processed free of Customs duty, VAT and EU taxes
  • there is direct access to Europe by road, rail and sea

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1999

A wind farm with six turbines is opened at Seaforth.

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Today

Seaforth deals with a large amount of the port's total work. Each year the dock deals with:

  • around 500,000 containers
  • 1,236,000 tonnes of oil
  • over 2.5 million tonnes of grain and animal feed
  • 452,000 tonnes of wood per year
  • 25% of all container traffic between UK and USA

The dock is still growing and developing. There are new container services, animal feed stores and warehouses. It is also part of the Atlantic Gateway initiative. This aims to improve communications, business and quality of life for residents and businesses in the north of Liverpool.

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