With the end of the stopovers in Santander, the CLdN bets to increase to about 100% the occupation of the three ships that connect Leixões to Rotterdam. CLdN wants to capture more loads for the scales in Leixões
Since last week, the CLdN has called the ports of Leixões and Rotterdam directly three times a week. The intermediate scale in Santander, which the Portuguese market helped to leverage, is now an autonomous service.
"The offer in Leixões is back to the beginning of the project, that is, dedicated commuter services between Leixões and Rotterdam, serving the entire hinterland and with possibility of transhipment to or from other routes: Purfleet and Killingholme in the UK, Dublin in Ireland and, Scandinavia, Gothenburg, Esbjerg and Hirsthals, "summed up Sérgio Costa, the Portuguese face of the CLdN in statements to TRANSPORTES & NEGÓCIOS. Without intermediate stops, they improve the transit times but, above all, it increases the reliability of the service, stresses the responsible, referring to the difficulties of navigation that may come from the approach of the winter.
Leixões departs on Mondays (23 hours), Wednesdays (23 hours) and Saturdays (18 hours), with arrivals to Rotterdam announced for 5 hours on Friday and Sunday and 6 hours on Saturday , respectively. The service is provided by three ships - the Catherine, the Vespertine and the Palatine -, three conrots each carrying about 3,000 linear meters of cargo. With the end of the scale in Santander, the ships have more space available, which does not mean that they start walking more empty. This is because in some routes the supply of capacity was already scarce, Sérgio Costa said.
"On the way down, the Friday output was always close to 100%, since the service was always direct Rotterdam-Leixões." Different was the situation on Sundays and Wednesdays, also because of the stop in Santander, but now "we are ready to respond to the demands of the market for Leixões and we expect to quickly approximate that value," he said. In the opposite direction, the expectation is to reach "very close to 100%" by the end of the year, leaving on Saturdays and Wednesdays, because without Santander "we will finally be able to accommodate the requests of more space of our customers." The situation of departures on Mondays is also different because "given the specificities of our producer market, the cargo is not always ready for shipment until the end of the day". "But we are working for the full occupation," said Sergio Costa.
Operating in Leixões since 2014, CLdN is largely responsible for the growth of the ro-ro cargo in the northern port, which has long been claimed by the national leadership in the segment (Setúbal is number but in car traffic).
The Luxembourg company's vessels are operated by Yilport Leixões at the Multiusos terminal, the only location (still) with space to park the semi-trailers and trucks that change the road across the sea to reach Northern Europe and the United Kingdom.
