Port of Nantes


The Port of Nantes is a commercial port located at the innermost part of the. This name refers to the facilities of the that are located in Nantes, in the French department of Loire-Atlantique, and are intended to receive commercial vessels for port handling operations.

Overview

The two main sites of the Port of Nantes are the terminals and the Roche-Maurice terminals on the right bank, both located in the. Relatively unknown to the general public due to their distance from, these nevertheless account for 10% of the traffic of the Grand Port Maritime of Nantes Saint-Nazaire, amounting to about 3 million tons of goods handled per year. It also includes the Émile-Cormerais quay on the right bank of the river in Saint-Herblain, mainly used for importing liquid bulk goods.

Access conditions

The port facilities are served by a maritime channel. The allowable drafts vary depending on the tidal coefficients. For 98% of tides, an allowable draft of is available in the Nantes channel. The turning basin has a diameter of. The air draft under the is, which is sufficient to allow the passage of the largest commercial vessels.

Cheviré

The terminal consists of the Cheviré upstream quay, long, and the Cheviré downstream quay, long. It has two sand berths and a roll-on/roll-off dock.
Cheviré is the leading hub for imported lumber in France and hosts the country's largest concentration of equipment and professionals in the timber industry. Other types of traffic are handled in this zone, such as recycling products, particularly metals. Cheviré also includes a sand terminal.
The terminal is also an urban logistics platform, located next to the Nantes ring road, close to Nantes Atlantique Airport, and directly connected to the road network. It is linked to the rail network and, via the river, to the port terminals of Montoir-de-Bretagne, thanks to a ro-ro berth in operation since 2002. The Grand Port Maritime of Nantes Saint-Nazaire has been authorized to directly operate handling equipment at the Cheviré sites starting from 1 January 2023.
The Cheviré coal, gas and oil power station operated here from 1954 to 1986. A 200 MWh / 100 MW grid battery is France's largest as of 2025.

Roche-Maurice

The terminal faces the Cheviré terminal, on the right bank of the Loire at the foot of the Cheviré bridge. At long, it is one of the main grain depots in western France. On average, just over one million tons of cereals pass through its facilities each year.

Cormerais

The Émile-Cormerais port site has two liquid berths that allow for the unloading and storage of vegetable oil, fish oil, and molasses. It also hosts service activities related to the maritime world.

Other sites

The Port of Nantes also includes quays closer to the city center, which are today closed to maritime traffic due to the shift in activity toward Cheviré and Roche-Maurice. Some still receive boats for various uses:

Right bank, upstream to downstream

  • : a key hub of port activity in the 18th and 19th centuries, this quay, long, permanently hosts the destroyer, and occasionally prestigious visiting ships or sailing races.

    Contemporary events

  • : On 8 December 1986, the headquarters of the Autonomous Port of Nantes Saint-Nazaire was moved to the, the result of the rehabilitation of the former hangar 11, built between 1960 and 1962, which originally connected the port warehouses with three footbridges—only one of which has been preserved. The Salorges center remains the official address of the headquarters of the Grand Maritime Port of Nantes Saint-Nazaire. The quay, long, also hosts the Navibus ferry terminal, providing passenger river transport, notably to.
  • : Measuring, it no longer receives ships. Originally, in 1763, the city of Nantes decided to construct a navigable path along the Loire River to avoid the climb of the Sainte-Anne hill, and named it Marquis-d'Aiguillon Wharf. It was temporarily renamed "Palamède Quay" during the French Revolution and was widened in 1909 with a reinforced concrete jetty.
  • Saint-Louis Wharf: At in length, it no longer receives boats. Initially called the Sécherie Quay, it was named after a warehouse used to steam flour and dried vegetables. In 1781, Beconnais established a flour mill there, followed in 1818 by a cane sugar refinery. Between 1825 and 1830, the refinery was taken over by the Louis Say & Company. In 1895, the flour mill was replaced by the, which supplied flour to the LU biscuit factory and many nearby bakeries. Around the same time, the quay also became a docking location for auxiliary liners of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique.
  • Cordon Bleu Wharf: It is long. Nearby are a Navibus terminal, a ship repair facility, and a boat wintering area for pleasure craft.

    Île de Nantes

  • : This -long site no longer hosts ships, but a former port operations building—known as the ""—was converted into an entertainment venue.
  • : Located on the Île de Nantes, it was built starting in 1913 and expanded in 1928. At long, it specialized in hosting cruise ships between 2002 and 2016.

    History

Bronze Age

The history of the Port of Nantes predates that of the city itself. It began with the advent of bronze metallurgy—an alloy of copper and tin. Tin extracted from the Nozay deposit or the was transported by barge via the Erdre River to its confluence with the Loire, where a primitive port emerged. For over a millennium, the ore thus transported—along with that from a vein formerly located beneath today's François-Bruneau Street in the city center—was involved in commercial exchanges via the Loire. By the end of the Bronze Age, around 900 BCE, a local bronze industry appeared, as evidenced by traces of three foundries discovered in the Mauves plain, the Jardin des Plantes, and. The copper needed for production was imported from Spain. Other traded goods included salt, preserved foods, leather, and cereals. The early port likely consisted of beaching areas or wooden docks stretching from the Jardin des Plantes upstream to the Chézine downstream. The port name at that time is unknown—it might have been Corbilo, a Gallic port mentioned in Greek geographic tradition as being located on the Loire, though this remains unconfirmed.

Antiquity

The first Celtic groups arrived in Gaul at the end of the Bronze Age and organized locally into tribes between 500 and 100 BCE. The Namnetes occupied the north bank of the Loire, while the Pictones occupied the southern bank. During the Gallic Wars, the Pictones supported the Roman occupiers. The final battle occurred in August 56 BCE and ended with a Roman victory. This favored the Pictones and spurred the development of the port of Ratiatum, which had served as a fleet base for the victorious Roman army.
The chief town of the Namnetes was given the Latin name Portus Namnetum and also known as in Latinized Gaulish. It was a simple trading post facilitating the transit of tin, marble, pottery, salt, cereals, Italian wine, and oils from the Iberian Peninsula. There were also shipyards on the Chézine and a fishing port. Goods transported via the river were partly unloaded, with the rest transshipped onto barges for further navigation to other ports along the Loire, such as Ancenis. The limits of the Gallo-Roman port extended from upstream to downstream. The arrival of Roman civilization fostered the growth of a city around the port, and in 276 CE, was built to protect the city and its port from barbarian invasions. This was followed by a series of invasions and civil wars from the 4th to the 10th century, plunging the city into a dark period and causing the port's decline.

Middle Ages

The port was revived thanks to the trade of wine and salt. The production of salt increased due to the abandonment of the old method of ignigenous salt in favor of the Roman technique of salt marshes, which had the effect of concentrating production in the Guérande peninsula and the Bay of Bourgneuf. In Nantes, in the 13th century, Pierre I of Brittany redeveloped two ports on either side of the castle on ancient sites: the port of Pierre-de-France upstream and the port-Maillard downstream, named after the seneschal Briand-Maillard. Further downstream, developments at the and the became essential links in Nantes' port infrastructure of the time. The port was then mainly devoted to transit, focused on French and European coastal trade. Wine from the Loire Valley was brought down to Nantes to be transshipped and sent to Breton ports and the British Isles. In the opposite direction, traveled up the Loire to be transported via Nantes to the port of Orléans, destined to supply Paris. In the 14th century, trade expanded to include Spain and ports of the Hanseatic League. The port slowly migrated westward: Richebourg declined in favor of Port-Maillard, and the development of the Fosse began with the construction of warehouses next to the Salorges. Beyond the city limits, outports at Port Lavigne, Couëron, and Le Pellerin allowed goods to be unloaded onto smaller vessels that in turn ascended the estuary. During the same century, Nantes became a military port to protect itself against acts of piracy, which were increasing in parallel with the growth of commercial trade.

16th century

While the Portuguese embarked on colonial ventures across the oceans, soon followed by the Dutch, the Spanish, and the English, the merchants of the port of Nantes cautiously continued their wine and salt trade throughout the 16th century. The Union of the Duchy of Brittany with the Crown of France, completed in 1532, had no significant impact on trade. The port of Nantes remained vulnerable to acts of piracy and consequently became one of the two bases for the kingdom's galleys in the Atlantic—the other being Marseille for the Mediterranean. These defensive ships were built at the Port-au-Vin shipyard before it was relocated to. In 1554, the port of Nantes hosted twenty-two of the kingdom's sixty-eight royal galleys.
The French Wars of Religion interrupted the country's economic growth for thirty years. The Duke of Mercœur, appointed governor of Brittany on 5 September 1582, turned Nantes into a stronghold of the Catholic League. The powerful Spanish Empire of Philip II, an ally of the League, took control of the port of Nantes, and for years, trade was conducted solely with Spain. That same year, Port-Maillard was equipped with its first wharf, strengthening its activity. The abjuration of Henry IV eventually forced Mercœur to submit, allowing the king to re-enter the city and sign the Edict of Nantes there on 13 April 1598.
File:Boisseau - Nantes en Bretagne.jpg|center|thumb|627x627px|The port of Nantes as designed by in 1645, still centered on the medieval sites of Port-Maillard and Bouffay. Upstream from the, traditional river transport continues on the Loire, while downstream, the merchant fleet begins to develop, initially from Port-au-Vin.