September 28 - Stena Line will reshuffle its North Sea ro-ro services between Rotterdam's Europoort and the UK by repositioning vessels and introducing larger tonnage.
Effective January 2018, Stena Line will operate the ro-ro vessels Misida and Misana between Rotterdam and Killingholme, with daily departures.
The two vessels were originally scheduled to connect Rotterdam and Harwich, replacing Capucine and Severine, which currently operate twice daily from Europoort to Harwich, as HLPFI reported here.
Instead, a larger ro-ro vessel will replace the current chartered ship, Caroline Russ, when its contract expires in January 2018. This new ship will join the repositioned Stena Scotia on the enhanced Rotterdam - Harwich service.
Stena Line said the changes would result in a capacity increase of 20 percent from Europoort.
"We have seen a strong growth in the transport market to the UK over the past several years and we are currently trading at very high utilisation on both routes," explains Annika Hult, trade director at Stena Line North Sea. "We see a good development in freight volumes arriving to Europoort by train and believe that the combination of rail and ro-ro transportation will only increase in the future.
"These capacity increases clearly demonstrate our ambitions and we are confident our customers will react positively to our expansion."
