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Méditerranée
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Sete-The town with 5 ports
THE FERRY PORT
With only one arrival per day, the sole ferry terminal in Sète - quay B in the Orsetti dock – is nevertheless overloaded with work. Once Sète has purchased the plots of land "abandoned" by the SNCF situated at the end of this dock, it will be able to build a huge car park, a passenger station worthy of the name, a customs office, a border police station, a bus station etc. A direct road link, which will more or less directly join up with the Peyrade roundabout, should be built to alleviate traffic congestion in the town and in particular on Avenue du Maréchal Juin heading towards Montpellier and the motorway. At the same time, the D quay (opposite) in the Orsetti dock will be fitted out to accommodate a second ferry and thereby increase rotation schedules. Unfortunately, Orsetti can only handle 170 / 175 m boats. If it wants to attract the new generation of 190 / 195 m boats, the Masselin pier, on the port captain’s office side and oil dock side, would have to be equipped with the appropriate facilities. The silos, which will be demolished, will then be rebuilt at the other end of the port, at the confluence of seaborne and river trade. This would create a consistent and logical unit which would enable the current passenger and car capacity to increase fourfold. North African destinations would not be the only ones to be developed. Rotations could be envisaged with Spain, Italy and beyond …
THE CRUISE LINER PORT
It's amazing to see great liners moored here, as tall as the buildings on the Quai d’Alger. There have been ferries in Sète for as long as there has been sea transport between France and the countries of North Africa, but there is now a growing ambition to make Sète a stopping place for cruise liners. It would be a real treat for travellers to arrive by sea and feast their eyes on this town that is such a good example of Mediterranean architecture and culture. Few ports allow passengers to disembark directly in the heart of the town. Contrary to many ports of call where cruisers have to take buses here they are able to admire the treasures of our region as soon as they land. Since we know that a passenger spends between €50 and €100 during a call, that a third of passengers visit the town (1/3 stay onboard and 1/3 go on tours), that a liner has between 1,500 and 3,000 passengers and that the ambition of Sète is to have at least one call per week, a quick calculation shows that annual turnover is between €1,300,000 to €5,200,000. It really would be worthwhile to render the cruise liner port, the former Marrakech station and the Algiers and Morocco quays as welcoming as possible and to lay down the red carpet between some palm trees in the Savonnerie and Jean-Frédéric roads.
THE FISHING PORT
Sète, which is the largest fishing port on the Mediterranean coast, has had to face up to the increase in petrol prices. There were 40 trawlers 10 years ago. Now there are only 30. This situation has produced a positive result – traffic in the port has been greatly reduced, which is an argument used against maintaining the fishermen in the town. The colourful old-style fish auction, which has often been disparaged due to its antiquated facilities (1966) but nevertheless acknowledged as being extremely efficient (1,000 batches per hour), is with its computer system going to be modernised (first fish auction in France to have real-time management of sales). Its turnover has risen from 17 million euros in 2006 to 21 million in 2007 partly due to the arrival of a number of "petits metiers" (small trades and professions). It should still be part of the local landscape for at least the next ten years to come. The Frontignan zone has been developing through freezing and processing activities. Tuna boats, which are often double or triple moored in the berths (safety, safety!!), have begun to lie up for the winter in the Midi dock, next to the station. The objective for Sète is to avoid double berthing in its port in the future. And last but not least, a careenage worthy of the name will be installed in Frontignan. It will have machines able to lift the largest tuna boats (more than 200 tons) as they are now only able to call at ports in Spain or Italy since Marseilles has centred its activities on long-distance cruisers. The matter of the berthing of tuna boats registered in Libya has remained unanswered …
THE COMMERCIAL PORT
With more than a thousand boats coming through each year, Sète is the second largest French trading port on the Mediterranean. The extension of existing breakwaters, and the building of the Delon groyne, have not only turned Sète into a major commercial port but also into an industrial port, in close proximity to influential companies: wine, tobacco, canning factories, gas, fertiliser, tropical timber etc. Sète is capable of making its mark on the map of Europe, situated at this exceptional crossroads for transport by road, rail and water. But the industrial wasteland shows something of a decline. The Languedoc-Roussillon Regional Authority has now taken over the management of the ports and is determined to awaken this sleeping beauty. The first sign of this has been the opening this year of a vehicle terminal for Hyundai (Corea) and Dacia (Romania) with 40,000 vehicles expected in 2008. A cement terminal should be built in 2010 around the clinker crushers in dock 2, which is the first dock in the port when you come through the large pass. It is here that the grain silos will be built after they have been demolished on the future ferry boat quay. There will also be a cereal terminal (Epicentre cereal cooperative and Ceréol factory). There is great potential here. Sète can already accommodate boats of up to 250 metres and cargoes of up to 70,000 tons, and is beginning to dream of Genoa and Shanghai.
THE MARINA
This is by far the trickiest matter. In the space of three years, from the time it was managed by the club ‘Société Nautique de Sète’ (the oldest in France) to its current-day management by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Sète – Frontignan, the marina has begun to change: restoration of the port master’s office, construction of a new pontoon, replacement of mooring buoys by mooring lines, work to improve safety … But the Languedoc-Roussillon Regional Authority, which has already recovered the commercial, passenger and fishing ports, might well take over the management of the marina. There is quite logically a lack of willingness to engage in more ambitious long-term projects in light of such uncertainty. However, there is no shortage of new projects. The possibilities are numerous: removal of the fishing boats to create a marina in the heart of the town, use of the dock between the Peyrade roundabout and the fishing industries zone at Frontignan as a huge uptown pleasure boat zone and the construction of a new jetty parallel to the Saint Louis mole which would begin at the theatre of the sea to create a port over the sea. For the time being, the most urgent measure would be to have a careening area worthy of the name. Why not recover the one used by the trawlers if a new one is built for them at Frontignan?
