Freight and Logistics News Pieces You May Have Missed This Week
NETHERLANDS – We begin this weekly round-up with a couple of statistics stories illustrating the current strengths of freight flows by sea and air, firstly with a Dutch port report that shows transhipment in the North Sea Canal Area at the seaports Amsterdam, IJmuiden, Beverwijk and Zaanstad declining to 49.4 million tonnes in the first half of 2018, a decrease of 5.1%. The Port of Amsterdam itself saw transhipment fall by 4.8% to 40.2 million tonnes. In Ijmuiden, transhipment declined to 9.3 million tonnes (-4.4%), Beverwijk registered a decline to 282,000 tonnes (-18.6%) and in Zaanstad transhipment sunk to just 84,000 tonnes, a slump of 59.3%.
All is not bad news however, the decline in Amsterdam in the first half of the year was due to a fall in coal transhipment of 25.5% and oil of 6.7% fuelled by maintenance at one of the terminals and reduced trading in the futures market. Meanwhile dry bulk cargo transhipment in Amsterdam was up 16.8% to 5.2 million tonnes thanks to a boom in construction and, despite a 1.6% drop in break bulk traffic, container transhipment rose 29.6% to 454,000 tonnes (45,457 TEU), partly due to the arrival of Samskip, which now operates a liner service to the UK.
Imports at the Port of Amsterdam fell by 7.8% in the first six months to 24.2 million tonnes. Exports on the other hand were up by 0.1% at 16 million tonnes. The number of sea-going vessels visiting the North Sea Canal Area increased to 3,938 (+6.2%).
