The Thunder Bay Port Authority has an arrangement with a Dutch partner, the Spliethoff Group of Amsterdam, to offer monthly transatlantic marine service to Europe in 2015.
Shippers in northwestern Ontario and Western Canada can now arrange to send partial shiploads of cargo, and even containers, to customers in Europe through the western Lake Superior port.
“Through the years, a lot of people were asking us about smaller lots – as low as 200 tonnes – to go to Europe and basically you couldn’t do it,” said port authority CEO Tim Heney. “You would have to charter a whole vessel.”
Starting next spring, Spliethoff will be introducing a 10,000-tonne capacity vessel into service that can handle shipper-owned containers, pallet-wide supplied containers, rolling machinery and heavy equipment, project-related cargo, and bulk and steel cargoes.
The service augments a partnership that already exists between Spliethoff and the Port of Cleveland, which introduced express service to Amsterdam last year with a single vessel.
To make the service more attractive to shippers by increasing the frequency of sailings, Spliethoff is adding a second vessel, the Muntgracht, which happened to dock in Thunder Bay, Nov. 10, to unload wind turbine parts.
Similar to an old-fashioned tramp steamer service, Spliethoff intends to use the vessel to roam the Great Lakes for cargo.
“They’re going to stop wherever they can,” said Heney. “They’re trying to build up business around the lakes and we’re trying to build it up through Thunder Bay.”
The port authority wants to promote the service as far west as Alberta, but closer to home he said it’s now a much cheaper option for regional shippers to load cargoes of granite, pulp or wood pellets, bound for Europe, through Thunder Bay instead of railing or trucking it to an East Coast port.
Heney said Spliethoff also has access to specialty vessels with large lifting capacity to handle heavy pieces.
A news release by the port authority indicated the service could provide access to the Baltic States and Russia, but Heney said a list of specific European ports of call hasn’t been provided by the company.
