Two distinct types of ports handle the French deep-sea cargo. Global ports of Northern Range and Marseilles act as the source for a number of overseas regions (forelands) and secondary ports mainly serve niche markets. In this paper we demonstrate that global ports serve also larger hinterlands, but their prominence over secondary ports depends on the types of cargo handled. The results of our spatial interaction model demonstrate that most of types of cargo flows are strongly constrained by distance. This indicates that, despite a deep transformation on forelands, the secondary ports subsist because they partly depend on niche markets and largely on local economies generating substantial amounts of non-containerized cargo flows. Some implications of this finding are explained.