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Le Havre (Municipality, Seine-Maritime, France): Corporate flags

Le Havre Port Authority
Le Havre Chamber of Commerce and Industry

See also:

Le Havre Port Authority

Former flag of Le Havre Port Authority - Image by Ivan Sache, 15 October 2003

Le Havre is currently the first port (by traffic) in France and the fifth in Europe (website). Energy ranks first, with importations of crude oil and coal, and transfer of refined products and gazeous hydrocarbures. Main bulk goods are grains, industrial products and chemicals. There is also a very important activity of container transfer. Passenger traffic is mostly represented by ferries operated by P&O between Portsmouth and Le Havre.
About 7,000 commerce ships land each year in Le Havre, involving 250 scheduled lines with more than 500 ports of call all over the world. The port has developed specialized terminals and, recently, a new port for container ships, the largest in France and one of the largest in Europe. The project Port 2000 shall allow landing of all kind of ships regardless the tide and without waiting time.

The Francis I lock, one of the biggest locks in the world (length, 400 m; width, 67 m; depth, 24 m) can be used by 250,000-ton ships to sail from the tidal basins into the constant level basins and canals such as canal du Havre.
A big industrial zone (1,500 ha) was set up along the canal du Havre. Big companies such as Renault and Hispano-Suiza (mechanic industries), Elf, Atochem, Goodyear and Air Liquide (petrochemistry), and Lafarge (cement) have built factories and warehouses in this industrial zone.
In 1995, the inauguration of the Pont de Normandie fostered the activity of the port by opening a quick route towards west. Compared with the traditional, crowdy route via the Pont de Tancarville, 70 km were spared.
A separate oil terminal was built in 1972 in Antifer, 22 km north of Le Havre. The port, built in deep water (25 m) was expected to receive supertankers (550,000 tons), but its economical interest was and is still disputed.

The organisation of the ports and the management of the traffic are explained in details, with nice screen simulations, in the Espace maritime et portuaire des docks Vauban, a museum set up in the 19th century docks of Le Havre. Since the entrance of the port is located near the center of the town (as opposed to Marseilles, for instance), the impressive traffic of huge container ships surrounded by a flotilla of "bees" can be easily spotted from the promenade of Le Havre.

The flag of Le Havre Port Authority (then called "Port autonome du Havre", today, part of HAROPA, with the ports of Rouen and Paris), hoisted in front of the main building of the authority and in other places in the port, was blue with the white authority's agency.
The logo is made of a ship "crossing" a "H" with curved vertical arms. The superstructure of the ship is made of the two letters "p" and "a", so that the full logo can be "read" port autonome du Havre. The logo can also represent a big ship crossing the Francis I lock. A ring of twelve European yellow stars is placed over the logo.

Ivan Sache, 15 October 2003

Le Havre Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Flag of the former CCI Le Havre, two versions - Images by Ivan Sache, 23 April 2018

CCI Le Havre manages two toll bridges over the lower valley of Seine, the Pont de Tancarville (1,400-m long, inaugurated in 1959) and the Pont de Normandie (2,141-m long, inaugurated in 1995), and the airport of Le Havre-Octeville. It has 200 elected members, representing 2,740 merchants, 2,050 service providers and industrialists. Its two commerce colleges are Institut Portuaire d'Enseignement et de Recherche (IPER), specialized in port activity, and EM Normandie.

CCI Le Havre, encompassing 29 municipalities, was merged in 2016 with CCI Fécamp-Bolbec and CCI Pays d'Auge to form CCI Seine Estuaire, of which it is now a Delegation.

The flag of CCI Le Havre (website) was blue with a spiral-like emblem composed of green and white pictographs.
The former flag of CCI Le Havre was white with the hexagonal emblem of the CCIs at the time and the writing "CCI LE Havre".

Ivan Sache, 23 April 2018