DUNDEE HARBOUR THEN AND NOW

The Early port (a very long time ago!)

In the very early days, the port welcomed livestock and wine from countries like France and Spain. As trade got busier in the 14th Century, the harbour had to start collecting “shore dues” for any goods arriving or leaving the port by sea. Using this money, the harbour was developed and improved.

The Port in the 1800-1900s

Dundee is famous for its ‘jute and jam’. The materials used for making jute were shipped into the port and taken on to the city’s many spinning mills where thousands of workers were employed. The jam reference relates to marmalademaking, which took off in the city when a ship full of oranges from Spain arrived at the port. Janet Keiller boiled up the fruit into a tasty preserve and Keiller’s marmalade – which went on to become world famous – was born. Shipbuilding is another of the city’s great successes, with vessels built by Robb Caledon at the purpose-built “Caledon East wharf” setting sail across the globe until the yard went silent in 1981.

The future

This is an exciting time for the Port of Dundee as it reinvents itself for the future and embraces the green energy revolution. As the world looks to adopt cleaner sources of power to heat and light our homes, schools and businesses, Port of Dundee has moved to forge new relationships with large offshore wind companies.

The new quayside will allow the large parts of a wind turbine to be brought into Dundee by ship where the individual parts will be brought together, just like building a Lego set.

They will then be shipped back out to sea to form new build wind farms, or driven by big trucks to arrays being built on land.

As new wind farms are constructed and begin operating, the focus will eventually switch away from drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.

That will create the need to decommission existing drilling rigs by removing them from the sea, cleaning them and breaking them down into scrap metal for recycling.