Samskip Rail and Maritime Developments

Short sea operator Samskip announced in October that they are responding to the need for higher frequency to and from Scotland. The current Amsterdam-Hull service sailing 3x per week will be updated to 2x Amsterdam-Hull and 1x Amsterdam-Grangemouth per week, starting on October 6th.

Samskip’s spokesperson remarked: ‘With the last phase of the Brexit transition on the horizon and question marks over what a post-covid world might look like, customers want the continuity and certainty that our services deliver’.

Earlier in August, Samskip had re-introduced the 3x weekly container service between Amsterdam and Hull. This was a response to greater demand for container service to and from UK, including the use of cross-docking in Amsterdam for converting trailer loads into container loads.

Samskip stated that the service relaunch coincides with other events that benefit multimodal over road-ferry transport. With drivers in short supply in Europe, low diesel prices are encouraging hauliers to focus on Continental business and pass over opportunities to run trucks into the UK. Recent trailer rate rises represent hard evidence of a short sea market tipping in favour of the container.

“Our experience has been that container transport’s ability to scale-up quickly and reliably proved compelling in the face of the uncertainties brought by previous deadlines, but then some of that freight returned to ferries as those deadlines simply became negotiation staging posts. This time, faced with new bureaucracy, driver shortages, trailer parks on motorways and COVID-related ferry schedule uncertainties, we expect a sizeable chunk of clients to stay with multimodal.”

Also in August Samskip announced a new rail freight connection between Amsterdam and Duisburg together with Nunner Logistics who currently operate weekly trains from the Chinese cities of Xi’an and Changsha to Duisburg. With both Duisburg and Amsterdam linking into Samskip’s European rail, road and short sea network, the six-hour rail transit between the two provides a reliable and flexible transport option, optimized for prompt delivery of 40ft/45ft containers, reefer units, flat racks and tank containers.