Press Release from La Nuit du Shortsea

MacAndrews , a 100% subsidiary of CMA- CGM Group, were interested to develop shortsea traffic via French ports and in this respect launched this year a weekly fixed day service between Dunkirk and the Portuguese ports of Setubal (Lisbon) and Leixoes (Porto ) and also operates a direct service to the Russian ports of St. Petersburg and Ust Luga .

In addition, the intermodal network of MacAndrews allows also to connect the French ports with Scandinavian and Baltic ports via transhipment in Rotterdam or Thamesport (London) .

Guy Adams , General Manager Northern Europe MacAndrews, comments:

” Our business is quite diverse . We are particularly active in the field of multimodal transport. We use Shortsea vessels , trains , barges and trucks for final delivery to customers .

With Shortsea shipping we try to compete with the trucks . To achieve this, we are marketing the use of 45 ft containers. This is valid both for ambient and for temperature controlled transport .

We also try to shorten transit times. It is very difficult to compete with trucks on this point. Increasing service frequency requires massification of volumes. This is particularly what we managed to do to and from Spain and Portugal.

It is of course over long distances that we can better compete with road . There are even links on which we can outperform roadtransport. This is for example the case on our direct service between Portugal and Ireland, which requires 48 hours of navigation between Leixoes and Dublin.

Despite unfavorable economic times , we have managed to grow our volumes consistantly over the five past years and we are quite confident about the evolution of our growth in the coming years.

Over large distances , Shortsea shipping or trains are ideal alternatives to trailers. Rail is also well supported at EU level with the TEN ( TRANS EUROPE NETWORK ) programme.

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