BENELUX\\\


The Port of Amsterdam’s strategy to realign its container trades towards shortsea and niche markets is paying off, says Lex de Ridder, commercial unit manager for bulk, containers and logistics. Amsterdam did have a main east-west container service to and from Asia serving its ACT deepsea container terminal but that disappeared two years ago as the lines cut back their operations during the recession. However, since then the port refocussed on niche markets like West Africa and also on operating as an ‘extended gate’ to the port of Rotterdam and Antwerp under its ‘Transferium’ policy, plus project and breakbulk cargo. “It’s working well,” says Lex de


Ridder. “During the good times we had around 500,000teu a year but now we’re back to around 400,000teu, of which 100,000teu are sea containers and 300,000teu inland shipping – though it is a very different mode of


transport. Our strategy now is to attract enough


volume so that we reach a critical mass at which point we should be able to attract other trades. “Attracting new lines in the


current climate isn’t easy, so we have to be patient. But the fact that we now have the same volume of containers as before shows that we have a natural hinterland and are capable of growing to, perhaps, about 1m teu – and it also gives us confidence that we can also grow the size of the hinterland that we serve, that we can expand it from the


north-east Netherlands to,


maybe Germany’s Ruhr area. And our goal is still to have between 1-2m teu by 2020.” Amsterdam will still be focussing


on its niche trades, which it sees as including the Americas – north and south - and possibly south-east Asia. “We have already managed to attract a West Africa service by Grimaldi and another by Lloyd MOL, so we see that as another natural niche for us.”


Shore thing for Stena This trade is very much involved


with cocoa, for which Amsterdam has long been the principal port worldwide, though historically most of this commodity has been in bulk or break-bulk form. A proportion of it is moving into containers, though. There is another containerised


trade at Amsterdam, though a slightly unusual one. The port is taking delivery of closed boxes full of British garbage from Tilbury, which is then reprocessed in the Netherlands. There is an acute shortage of reprocessing capacity in the UK itself, but at the same time it is illegal to store it in the open, so a solution is to send it to Holland to be dealt with. There is also a similar trade developing from Italy. Biomass is another big business.


In May this year Amsterdam handled two 47,000-tonne bulk ships and, again, the reason was a lack of suitable storage space in


England. The material can be stored in Amsterdam and then moved over to the UK in smaller lots. So far, the biomass traffic has all been in bulk, but there is the potential to containerise some of it. “Biomass – or woodchips – is really taking off,” enthuses Lex de Ridder. “Most of the current cargo it is shipped in from the Great Lakes region of North America.” Coal, the fuel that biomass


is supposed to partly replace, is nevertheless also strong in Amsterdam, and looks as if it will remain so for many years to come. The coal market is a hard one to predict, says Lex de Ridder. Many mines have closed in Europe but the fuel is still burned in vast quantities, so imports have continued to grow. At the same time, there has been a vast increase in liquid biofuels, while agribulks, in which Amsterdam is a market leader and


Issue 4 2012


21 New business by the boxload for Amsterdam


one of its chief traffics, have stayed quite stable. Bulks, then, account for around


90% of Amsterdam’s current business, but it is important that the port develops its container traffic as this is where much of the future potential growth lies. In a sense, that could come about naturally, as some of the bulk traffic is migrating towards specialised containers, particularly for liquids and dry bulk, including agri bulk and some minerals. “Ten years ago, almost all the cocoa was bulk or bagged, but now it’s a mixture of containerised and bulk.” The attraction of containerised shipping is that other capacity, or capacity on the return leg, can be much more easily used for other general cargo than can bulk ships, and so a more diverse range of cargoes can be attracted to the port. “For instance, there are a lot of containerised cars going back to West Africa. It used to be all secondhand vehicles, but now they’re increasingly cars that have been refurbished to look like new, and that naturally prefers containers to ro ro shipping.” In fact, Lex De Ridder sees a general move towards containers for vehicle shipments as containers can be stacked and, hence, more cargo can be packed in. In the food sector, stricter hygiene


rules also favour boxes over bulk shipping in many cases. Wind energy could also play an


important part in the port’s future and there are plans to develop facilities both outside and inside the locks for both storage and assembly and maintenance. The Dutch government has not in fact been particularly assiduous in developing this form of energy but there is a strong market in other countries notably the UK, Germany and Denmark, all of which can easily be reached from Amsterdam. There


are other major port


operations in and around Amsterdam that are not under the control of the Amsterdam port authority, including the food and ro ro port of Ijmuiden and the Tata steel complex. In 2013 Amsterdam is planning to corporatise and become a government owned autonomous limited company. Talks are going on about regional port activities and increased regional cooperation. The ports will in any case need to talk to each other about a new project to enlarge the sea lock, which will benefit all of them by allowing access for larger ships. Budgets for this have already been provided and a formal start date will be decided shortly. The new lock could be ready in about 2017, if all goes to plan.


In combination with this project


the port of Amsterdam will increase its capacity to partially offload ships which would then proceed up- channel at reduced draught to other destinations – or vice-versa.


Dutch Minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen activated the first shore- based power connection for sea- going vessels in Rotterdam at the Stena Line terminal. The company’s ferries now obtain their electricity from the mainland and no longer have to run their engines to generate power. The scheme is supported by


the Port of Rotterdam Authority, the municipality of Rotterdam and the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, and is in line with the Port Authority’s aim to become the most sustainable port in the world. Around 300 shore-based power connections for inland shipping are already in use in the city centre.


Double win for Dutch airport


Amsterdam Airport Schiphol received double honours in the 2012 Asian Freight & Supply Chain Awards (AFSCA), winning the ‘Best Airport Europe’ category for the eighteenth time and ‘Best Cargo Terminal Europe’ section for the thirteenth occasion. The AFSCA awards honour winning organisations for their leadership, service quality, innovation, customer relationship management and


reliability. The Airport award took


into consideration Schiphol’s infrastructure, competitiveness, investment, and provision of cargo support services and facilities. The Air Cargo Terminal Award


sought evidence of


performance standards, satisfactory resolution of problems and the effectiveness and user-friendliness of IT systems.


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