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ScANdINAvIA


Stena Line introduced the first of two super ferries, Germanica No 3, on the Gothenburg-Kiel route at the start of September. The second, Scandinavica No 2, joins her in mid-January. The largest ro-pax ferries


in the world, the vessels each have 4,200 lane metres of trailer and trade car capacity. Freight accounts for around 45% of traffic on the route, says Hans Hansson, commercial freight manager for Stena Line in Scandinavia. Stena has withdrawn its freight-only services


from


Gothenburg to Lübeck and Travemünde to focus on the new route. Overall capacity to and


from Germany increases by 25%. In the year to September, Hansson says Stena’s Sweden- Germany services were operating almost 23% up on 2009, fuelled by recovering volumes and a gain in market share. The routes are well balanced


north and southbound thanks to “extremely strong” imports into Sweden. “It’s very rare to have an import surplus in value terms, but we saw it in the first half of the year thanks to tax incentives encouraging house construction,” Hansson says. “It’s more of a problem to


find reloads ex-Sweden because of the strong krona, but Volvo is exporting cars, trucks and


only a 2-3% increase this year. Stena’s service from Karlskrona


construction equipment again,” he adds. The Danish economy, which


entered recession later than the rest of Europe, has been


Geodis Wilson gets it together in the Nordics


Geodis Wilson will complete the largest change in its long Nordic history on 1 January, combining the support and development functions of four standalone country operations into a single organisation. Europe’s fourth-largest freight forwarder has “probably the biggest LCL operation in the Scandinavian market” out of Gothenburg, according to Peter Vallenthin, MD of the Nordic region. Its main aim is not to save money – all employees are staying on – but to leverage its competences and expertise across the region. “It’s not one market – the culture, customer portfolios, flows of goods and the ways we do business differ with each country,” Vallenthin says. “But there is an opportunity to extend the value proposition and offer a lot more destinations by combining volumes through a total Nordic space allocation.” Scandinavia “suffered from the crisis as did the


rest of the world” and Geodis Wilson saw decreases of 15-20% in its various industry verticals. But the


scale and speed of the rebound has surprised Vallenthin. “We’re back at our business levels of 2008, or even beyond,” he says. Founded in 1843, the Wilson


Peter Vallenthin


name carries a lot of weight in Scandinavia. The company came to specialise in air and sea freight after it was bought by a strategic investor 10 years ago, with Schenker (at that time BTL Group) retaining the trucking, distribution and contract logistics operations. “We’re still mainly focused


on air and sea movements from A to B, but this requires more responsive, integrated solutions today,” Vallenthin says. “We’re moving freight not just from port to port or airport to airport, but also door to door as customers have outsourced their entire freight departments.” The Scandinavian economies are highly import-


driven these days, and Geodis Wilson is integrated with several major retail customers through EDI. The company uses its now global presence - it has doubled its footprint to 56 countries since its acquisition by Geodis – to offer services such as pricing or customised packaging at point of origin.


Asians soften DHL blow for Copenhagen airport


Stripping out the one-off factor of DHL Aviation’s relocation to Leipzig, Copenhagen Airport saw cargo growth of more than 8% in the first six months of this year, reaching 136,000 tonnes. “We didn’t lose any carriers


through the crisis and all the freighter operators that call


here have increased their frequencies by at least one a week, including Korean Air Cargo, China Cargo Airlines and Air China,” says Lars Korup, the airport’s head of cargo. Singapore Airlines is adding


a fifth freighter frequency, via Chennai, but Copenhagen is


also expanding its potential for bellyhold cargo, thanks to Air Canada’s five flights a week from Toronto and a new Delta Air Lines service from JFK. Qatar Airways meanwhile launched from Doha with an A319 but upgraded in October to an A330-300 with much greater cargo capacity.


recovering more slowly, and Sweden-Denmark


routes,


some operated exclusively by Stena and some jointly with its Scandlines subsidiary, have seen


in south-east Sweden direct to Gdynia, Poland, is performing strongly. Hansson says Polish hauliers have migrated to this route to avoid German road tolls, which increased this year. The Scandlines services from Trelleborg to Rostock and Trelleborg have similarly benefited from trucks delivering to and from east European markets such as Hungary, by reducing the mileage on German motorways. Ro-ro growth for DFDS in the


first part of this year has started to flatten since August, though exports continue to flow from


ISSUE 4 2010 World’s largest ferries for Sweden-Germany route


the UK to Sweden, says Sean Potter, UK MD of DFDS Seaways. Scandinavian services were


unaffected by DFDS’s acquisition of Norfolkline except for a slot charter arrangement from Esbjerg, Denmark, to Harwich and Immingham. EC competition rules required a third party to take up these slots and Stena Line has done so from November. “We had a previous cooperation with DFDS Tor Line from Gothenburg to Harwich, so we have some experience and this is a good opportunity,” says Stena’s Hansson. The initial agreement for 20,000 units a year can be expanded as required, he adds.


Swedes up, Danes down for Freja


A growing presence in the Swedish market shielded Freja Transport & Logistics, a top-five provider of overland transport solutions in Scandinavia, from the worst of the downturn. “When the crisis hit us in 2009 we lost 20%


of our business in Denmark, but Sweden kept growing and was another 30% up, so across the whole business we maintained status quo,” says CEO Jesper Petersen. “We only started up in Sweden in April 2007,


by acquiring small regional transport companies. We wanted to be truly Nordic, not just Danish. At the time there was a big gap between the three leading Swedish operators and the smaller players. Although we were quite small ourselves in Sweden, we felt we were well positioned to meet the requests of big customers. We’re number two in Denmark, so we’re an established player here.” Freja opened an office in Jönköping, southern Sweden, in February this year and expanded further into the region with the acquisition in July of ATS Cargo, a small but profitable concern based in Växjö. Petersen expects to gain further share as the Swedish road transport market continues to consolidate. In Denmark, Freja reinforced its domestic


Around 70% of Copenhagen’s throughput is transit cargo. The airport aims to strengthen its regional hub role through its new CPH Cargo City development, in a 26,000sq metre property left vacant when SAS Cargo relocated closer to the cargo aprons. “The premises were airside


and not initially suitable as a multi-tenant building, but we have now made space available for airlines, GSAs, third-party handlers, freight forwarders, courier companies and truckers,” says Korup, who expects the first tenants to move in by January.


logistics business by acquiring the forwarding and non haulage- related operations of Intertrucking/ Cargo Nord last January. Across the four


Nordic countries - Freja also has offices in Norway and Finland - the company operates 1,500 trailers but subcontracts its haulage to as many as 500 small, dedicated hauliers.


Jesper Petersen Domestic and intra-Nordic transport accounts


for more than half of total business but, despite high labour costs in the region, Petersen says Freja’s groupage costs are lower than those of most of its European partners. The company therefore looks after linehaul


from Copenhagen to the Milan hub of its Italian partner Sifte Berti, for example. A similar co-operation began earlier this year


with Belgian firm Hamann International Logistics, with Freja covering most of the movements between Belgium and the Nordic region.


Lars Kroup: Expects to welcome first Cargo City tenants soon


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