Bideford Harbour

Captain Roger Hoad, the Pilot and Harbour Master, provides the information on this page.

Completely sheltered Harbour

For ships up to 100 metres in length

A 93 metre ship turns at Bideford, with TDC Pilot in control, Spring 2009

Bideford offers 300 metres of modern quay frontage available twice a day every day on the tide for vessels of around 2 metres draught, and on spring tides twice a day to vessels of up to 5 metres draught. The NAABSA berths are flat level and regularly maintained as such with our cranes.

Bideford regularly handles ships of 90+ metres  with draughts of 4.5 metres or more that export clay from local quarries to Finland and Spain. Other occasional imports are road salt. In May 2011 a  timber exporting company recognised the benefits of storing and exporting logs from Bideford. Now in April 2012 around 24,000 tonnes of logs have been exported successfully, saving many thousands of lorry road miles. The trade is sustainable harvesting of trees (mainly Spruce) from the south west and is set to continue.

The port has a new state of the art Fuchs grab rehandler,  capable of loading or discharging a ship swiftly. Other specialised craneage is regularly used for non grab cargo work.

Captain's eye view of the crane and quay before commencing to load 3,000 tonne of Ball Clay.