Pilotage and Harbour

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 Europe and especially southern Spain. Other occasional imports are road salt. In May 2011 a timber exporting company recognised the benefits of storing and exporting logs from Bideford. and for two years some 48,000 tonnes of logs were been exported successfully, saving many thousands of lorry road miles. The trade is sustainable harvesting of trees (mainly Spruce) from the south west. . The log trade from Bideford (and from Yelland) has now ceased (2015).

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

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