Portsmouth Port saw its biggest-ever delivery of bananas earlier this month, with the council-owned shipping company MMD reporting 15,000 pallets.
Portsmouth broke its banana record through pure chance, as the Fyffes-run Elsebeth ship had originally intended to unload much of its cargo in Waterford, Ireland, before engine trouble forced it to dock in Portsmouth for repairs and unload the entire cargo at the dock on August 10.
The record-breaking shipment arrived on three ships. The Geist-run Klipper Stream and the Elsebeth carried the bulk of the delivery at 6,500 pallets each, with a smaller shipment of 2,000 pallets on the Star vessel.
It represented a considerable challenge for the port, which handles around 675,000 bananas each year in total.
David Loader, deputy commercial manager at MMD, told freshinfo: “We would normally expect around 12,000-13,000 pallets a week, so it wasn’t too much of a problem.
“In the winter months we take a lot of Moroccan citrus so we have the extra capacity at the moment to deal with more bananas.
“It was our biggest-ever week and you just don’t know what will happen in shipping from week to week, but we are happy to help out should there be issues in the future, as we dealt with it well.”
The beleaguered Elsebeth was docked at Portsmouth for a week.
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