Port of Rotterdam Overwhelmed

Shippers using the EU’s biggest seaport may be hit with new surcharges next month.

Serious operational problems and delays at the Euromax, ECT Home and ECT Delta terminals in Rotterdam these past three weeks have caused both delays and short-shipments of cargo to and from the Baltic and Scandinavian countries.

According to ?Unifeeder, a leading container feeder carrier, the situation is caused by a lack of manpower and increased volumes, combined with delayed ocean liners causing peaks at terminals exceeding their capacity.

“Consequently,” said spokesmen, “we are experiencing delays beyond 36 hours as well as short-shipments on our Scandinavian and Baltic services, and the performance of the terminals has prevented us from maintaining our planned schedule.”

This added spokesmen, was in spite of a concerted effort to maintain quality operations.

“Accordingly, we have experienced a loss of revenue and we have been facing additional operational costs as a result of our vessels laying idle in Rotterdam for a longer period of time, extra fuel consumption and overtime costs in the wayports.,” spokesmen said.

This report was corroborated by Maersk Line, which issued a release stating that there has been “unprecedented” traffic increase in EU-Asia trade lanes.

“As these challenges are caused by external factors of which Unifeeder has no control, we cannot absorb the extra costs for feeder vessels arising from this unfortunate situation,” said spokesmen.

“If this situation continues during the next weeks we will implement a congestion surcharge as from 1 August.”