Earlier this year Stena Line announced the increase to their freight capacity on the route Rotterdam (Europoort) to Harwich January 2018 by replacing the current two RoRo vessels by two larger ships. Stena Line now announces their plans to also increase capacity on the route Rotterdam-Killingholme in January 2018. Stena Line will consequently increase their total capacity from Europoort with some 20%.
A decision has now been taken to introduce a larger RoRo vessel on the North Sea to replace a current chartered ship, the Caroline Russ, when its contract expires in January 2018. Stena Line will furthermore as of next year reposition the RoRo ships between the Europoort routes to further optimize the available capacity. On the route from Rotterdam to Killingholme, which Stena Line started with one vessel in 2014 and which has daily departures since 2016, MV Misida and MV Misana will operate. The new ship will be introduced next to the Stena Scotia on the route Rotterdam – Harwich in January 2018.
Annika Hult, Trade Director at Stena Line North Sea says: “I am very pleased to announce that we will now take the next step in the strategic development of our Rotterdam (Europoort) freight transport hub to the UK.
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 utilization on both routes. We further see a good development in freight volumes arriving to Europoort by train. We believe that the combination of rail and RoRo transportation will only increase in the future and our vision is that Europoort will develop into a key rail freight connection point to and from the UK.
"These capacity increases clearly demonstrate our ambitions and we are confident our customers will react positively to our expansion.” Annika Hult continues.
Source: Stena Line