MacAndrews & Company, a leading European multimodal transport provider optimised its established Portuguese services by offering a refreshed and restructured service schedule. Trials for the new service started in week 43 now includes a new call in Algeciras, a second Dunkirk call and a weekly Figueira Da Foz call.

The revised service provides a wider range of opportunities for customers looking to ship from the Iberian Peninsula to Northern Europe and beyond whilst offering excellent transit times while maintaining high schedule integrity. The decision to initiate a new port of call at the South of Spain via Algeciras on the Portuguese service was to widen MacAndrews geographic reach. This also underlines MacAndrews’ plans of reinforcing its activity to and from the Iberian Peninsular.

The three Portuguese departure ports from Figueira Da Foz (Wednesdays), Setúbal (Thursdays) and Leixões (Fridays) on the East Coast service connects the south of UK via Tilbury, France via Dunkirk, Netherlands and surrounding areas via Rotterdam.

The West Coast service offers 2 Portuguese port departures, Setúbal (Fridays) and Leixões (Saturdays) to the north of the UK via Liverpool, Ireland via Dublin, to the south west coast of the UK via Bristol and from the UK/Ireland back to Portugal via Leixões. The new Algeciras port of call is scheduled for Wednesdays.

Currently, MacAndrews offers eleven weekly connections from the European mainland to the United Kingdom, two of which are attributed to the Portuguese service utilising four vessels.

Four vessels with capacities of 430 TEU and 630 TEU respectively are deployed on the new Portuguese service. The West Coast leg is serviced by the 2 x 630 TEU capacity vessels; the Elbstrand and Vega Philip; whilst the East Coast legs is serviced by 2 x 430 TEU capacity vessels; the DS Blue Ocean and Ice Crystal.

This revamped service stresses MacAndrews’ customer-oriented approach; in preparation for one of the busiest import export periods in Q4 to maintain schedule integrity and increase in demand. All deployed vessels are equipped to carry pallet-wide / high cube equipment and therefore enable customers to ship the same amount of cargo per container as they would on road transportation giving them a similar service with a greener differentiation. One of our voyages takes 300 trucks off the roads saving an average of 55% Co2 emissions per load.

Port Rotation:

East Coast

Figueira Da Foz– Setúbal – Leixões- Tilbury – Dunkirk – Rotterdam – Dunkirk – Leixões - Figueira Da Foz

West Coast

Setúbal – Leixões – Liverpool – Dublin – Bristol – Leixoes – Algeciras - Setubal

Source: MacAndrews