UECC will be transporting vehicles and other rolling cargo to and from the Central European freight hub Zeebrugge via the ports of Esbjerg and Drammen. The traffic reaches Gothenburg every week (started week 15).
North Sea Port and the Port of Gothenburg have signed an agreement to work closely together. Setting up a network of medium-sized European ports and working on energy management in the ports are central to this.
The ports have things in common: the Volvo Car factories that are located in both ports, and the daily roro ships from DFDS, sailing between Gothenburg and Ghent.
The ports want
- to strengthen their commercial interests and support the flow of goods between the two ports
- to share knowledge in the field of energy management in the port. This concerns the introduction of renewable energy sources, environmental management and sustainable port management. To this end, research into further digitization will be carried out. In this context, the ports will exchange employees in the future.
- to check whether they can jointly submit projects for European financing in the fields of sustainability, energy transition, digitization, and the European transport network.
The agreement was signed during a visit by North Sea Port to the Port of Gothenburg on Wednesday 20 April.
The Italian antitrust authority sanctioned ferry company Caronte&Tourist with a fine valued EUR 3.7 million for abuse of dominant position on the maritime links in the Strait of Messina.
Last year,Italy’s Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato launched an investigation in order to ascertain whether the Messina-based company took an irregular advantage from a dominant position in the maritime transport of passengers with accompanying wheeled vehicles and commercial vehicles with driver.
Analysis carried out by the Authority revealed, in particular, that Caronte&Tourist applied prices which are significantly higher than those charged by other operators, moreover not parameterized with respect to the costs that would be expected in the performance of the service. Moreover, these prices appeared to be particularly discriminatory towards passengers with car travelling alone.
Following the failure of the previous request of offers for building a roro vessel fit for transporting railcars, Rete Ferroviaria Italiana’s last call for shipyards interested at constructing three dual-fuel fast ferries due to be deployed on the Strait of Messina also attracted no participants.
The contract price was roughly EUR 52 million euros, of which approximately EUR 1.2 million for the project. RFI is now considering how to proceed; one option is to issue a new call for tenders.
Complexity of the procedure and rising costs of raw materials might be among the reasons for the failure according to some sources familiar with the matter.
Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, rail infrastructure network manager and company part of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane group, last summer made public its fleet renewal plan which consists of:
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- Refitting and hybridization of the 2013-built ferry MESSINA
- Delivery of the new ship IGINIA which took place earlier this year
- Purchase of a new ro-pax ship before 2025
- Cold ironing system ashore in the ports on the two sides of the Strait of Messina
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Project to buy three high-speed vessels dual-fuel LNG or Electric for passenger transport service
As a response to increased customer demand in the Baltic Sea South region, Stena Line will launch its two new “long” E-Flexer ferries on the route between Karlskrona and Gdynia.
- First in July 2022, second in November 2022
- Both were originally planned to be deployed on the route between Nynäshamn (Sweden) and Ventspils (Latvia)
- Length: 240 meters
- Capacity: 1,200 passengers and 3,600 freight lane meters
The recently lengthened and modernised STENA SCANDIA and STENA BALTICA will continue to serve the route between Nynäshamn and Ventspils.
Current ships on Karlskrona-Gdynia: STENA GOTHICA, -VINGA, -VISION, -SPIRIT,
Click on the map to access the real-time route map
The French company has confirmed the introduction of a more tourism-oriented ferry GALICIA on to its Rosslare – Bilbao route from November 2022. (E-flexer, built 2020)
Currently the Rosslare-Bilbao route is served by ropax CONNEMARA, a predominantly freight vessel with limited facilities for holidaymakers.
In 2019, Ireland welcomed 431,000 Spanish visitors to the island.
The visit to Rosslare followed on from an earlier announcement that the twice-weekly service from Cork to France, which was launched earlier this year, will become a permanent feature of Brittany Ferries’ sailing schedule.
Freight
- Freight lane metres: +5.9% or 43.6 million (last 12 months)
- Total volumes in March 2022 were 0.3% above 2021 (on level adjusted for route changes) as higher volumes in North Sea, Mediterranean, and Channel were offset by lower volumes in Baltic Sea.
- North Sea volumes were slightly above 2021.
- Volumes in the Mediterranean network were overall well above 2021.
- Towards the end of March, volumes on the English Channel routes were increased due to the suspension of sailings of P&O Ferries.
- Baltic Sea volumes were below 2021 due to the war in Ukraine. Volumes were also impacted by reduced capacity on a route where one ferry was removed.
Passenger ferries
- The number of passengers continued to increase in March as travel restrictions were rolled back.
- The number of passengers increased more than four hundred percent to 134k equal to 49% of the number of passengers in March 2019, the latest comparable month pre-Covid-19.
- Volumes primarily increased between Norway and Denmark as well as on the Channel.
- For the last twelve months 2022-21, the total number of passengers was 1.1m compared to 1.0m in 2021-20 and 5.1m in 2019, the latter being the latest pre-Covid-19 year.
Tallink Grupp has decided not to add a second vessel to the Tallinn-Stockholm route in 2022 as originally planned. The route will continue to be operated by the company’s vessel BALTIC QUEEN and the departures from Tallinn and Stockholm will take place every other day.
VICTORIA I, which was due to join BALTIC QUEEN on the route from early June this year, will currently remain suspended in Port of Tallinn once it finishes its current replacement service on the Tallinn-Helsinki route on 21 April.
On April 12, 2022, Golden Star Ferries’ new acquisition ANDROS QUEEN (former SILVER QUEEN) arrived at the port of Piraeus, following a 28-day journey from Japan.
The ship was purchased from Kawasaki Kinkai Kisen (Silver Ferry) on February 9, 2022 and delivered on March 9. She will be converted at Perama repair zone and expected to be ready for service on early 2023, possibly on the Rafina-Andros-Tinos-Mykonos line.
This photo and more photos on voyagair.shipspotting (Christos Chatzaras on Instagram)
On April 10, 2022, SAOS Ferries announced that its latest acquisition ferry MISHI (former MISHIMA) will be renamed THE LADY.
She was purchased from Mishima Mura (M-Line) in June 2021 and currently undergoing a major conversion at Drapetsona Repair Zone to carry 700 passengers and 150 cars.
She is expected to be introduced on the Dodecanese inter-island service.
