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Photo: Port of Cleveland


Above and opposite: cargo being loaded and unloaded. Initially, the Cleveland-Europe


Express will have one vessel call per month in Cleveland and one in a major port in Europe. The Port’s goal is to offer customers the best option for door-to-door cargo movement. The agreement with the Spliethoff Group allows the Port to add a second ship, allowing for a vessel in port every two weeks, as demand rises. Bart Peters, manager of The Spliethoff Group’s America Service, said that the agreement with the Port of Cleveland allows the company to better serve the North Atlantic trade lane. “Provid- ing scheduled, reliable capacity to the America’s industrial heartland via the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence


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Seaway routing will enable shippers to connect more efficiently to the European continent,” Peters said. The Port Authority pays Spliethoff


between $850,000 and $950,000 per month for the service, according to the port's David Gutheil. The port gets the revenue from customers paying to ship their goods to and from Cleveland. The goal is to start breaking even later this year, Gutheil said. Target markets in the United States include Midwest manufactur- ers looking for a better deal than sending their goods by truck or rail to an East Coast port. Exports leaving Cleveland on the


Fortunagracht included goods from Ohio, Iowa, Indiana and California,


May 2014


with much of the freight ultimately headed for Asia, South America and the Middle East. It seems that the project has all


the ingredients to be successful. A package freight service on the Great Lakes thrived back in the 1970’s and 1980’s so one wonders why it could not work today. Much has changed though and cost, frequency and reli- ability of the overall service will be the determining factors. We wish the parties all success and will revisit the Cleveland Europe Express Service over time to follow its evolution.


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