The Mainport Group continues to grow, driven by customer demand, as Seán Murphy, MD of Ronayne Shipping, outlines to John Daly
The Mainport Group is a provider of marine services to ship-owners, exporters, importers, oil companies, seismic survey companies and offshore wind energy development.
Founded in 1957 by the late Finbarr Ronayne, and steered today by his son David Ronayne, CEO of The Mainport Group, the company has worked in North & South America, the Middle East, Africa, Malaysia, Australia and the European Union.
With a fleet consisting of tugs, platform supply vessels, seismic support vessels and a seismic chase vessels and geophysical survey vessels. Mainport currently employs 200 people covering its shipping, stevedoring, agency operations, freight forwarding, warehousing and worldwide crew.
The Group specialises in ships agency services, provided nationwide, through partnerships around Ireland resulting in a single point of contact for all Irish port calls. Each of the group companies is well-established and can offer extensive local knowledge in each location giving a professional, flexible and efficient service.
“Business has varied in 2025, looking across the various services that we provide,” explains Seán Murphy, managing director of Ronayne Shipping Ltd. “Our stevedoring and vessel agency regular customer base have remained steady as well as new additional project cargo projects in 2025. Our warehousing portfolio has grown from 72,000sqft to 110,000sqft which caters for current customer expansion as well as new entries into the Irish market.”
The Freight Forwarding Department, looking after the various containerised cargos exporting to and importing from all four corners of the globe for customers, has faced challenges due to the geopolitical tensions which has impacted the markets.
“There was also a lot of front-loading of the markets due to potential Trump tariffs coming into play. From September through to November we see a seasonal peak with companies importing additional stocks to cover the festive season.”
Seán explains that Ronayne Shipping Ltd are pleased to continue to enjoy very long-standing relationships with a variety of customers: “I believe this is due to the calibre of our people and how they serve our loyal customers.”
These clients include Pipelife Ireland, Grimaldi Lines, Grasslands Agro, MSL Engineering Ltd, Euroforest Ireland, Yara Ireland, Stryker, Irish International Trading Corporation (IITC), Seabox Group Ireland, NRG Awareness, Dairygold Agri, Euroactive, David Lowe, Ceva Logistics, Lidl, Browne Brothers Site Services, Alliance Packaging, Asso Subsea (Celtic Interconnector Project) and QK Meats.
“With our stevedoring and vessel agency teams we enjoy going from the discharge of over 1,000 new vehicles for Grimaldi to unloading 4000MT of Bulk Fertiliser for Grasslands or Yara or 6000MT of Bulk Salt for IITC to loading Break Bulk cargos as very large and heavy modules for MSL. We also handle very large project cargoes like 130MT Reactors going to the refinery or copper pot stills and fermentation tanks going to IDL.”
Operations also include vessel agency teams looking after the Asso Subsea Celtic Interconnector Project cable laying vessels.
Reference :“There was also a lot of front-loading of the markets due to potential Trump tariffs coming into play. From September through to November we see a seasonal peak with companies importing additional stocks to cover the festive season.”
Seán explains that Ronayne Shipping Ltd are pleased to continue to enjoy very long-standing relationships with a variety of customers: “I believe this is due to the calibre of our people and how they serve our loyal customers.”
These clients include Pipelife Ireland, Grimaldi Lines, Grasslands Agro, MSL Engineering Ltd, Euroforest Ireland, Yara Ireland, Stryker, Irish International Trading Corporation (IITC), Seabox Group Ireland, NRG Awareness, Dairygold Agri, Euroactive, David Lowe, Ceva Logistics, Lidl, Browne Brothers Site Services, Alliance Packaging, Asso Subsea (Celtic Interconnector Project) and QK Meats.
“With our stevedoring and vessel agency teams we enjoy going from the discharge of over 1,000 new vehicles for Grimaldi to unloading 4000MT of Bulk Fertiliser for Grasslands or Yara or 6000MT of Bulk Salt for IITC to loading Break Bulk cargos as very large and heavy modules for MSL. We also handle very large project cargoes like 130MT Reactors going to the refinery or copper pot stills and fermentation tanks going to IDL.”
Operations also include vessel agency teams looking after the Asso Subsea Celtic Interconnector Project cable laying vessels.