Antwerp eyes up French market

- The Port of Antwerp has its eyes on becoming the “ideal maritime gateway for France”, according to CEO, Eddy Bruyninckx.

Speaking at a ‘Port Day’ organised by Antwerp in Paris at the end of last week, Bruyninckx said that in 2009 some 500,000 teu were carried to and from France and that the Antwerp port community wished to further increase this volume.

Around 16% of all container traffic through Antwerp has France as its origin or destination, with for the port are Lille-Roubaix-Valenciennes and Alsace-Lorraine being important trading regions.

More than half of this volume is carried by road, with the remainder fairly evenly split between barge and rail transport. The Rhine and Moselle in particular are important for barge freight.

Transport via the Scheldt and the Leie is expected to get a significant boost once the Seine-Scheldt project has been completed. For rail transport there is an increasingly wide range of services to and from intermodal terminals situated near the border.

There are also important rail services to Spain, Italy and Switzerland with stop in France. Recently Inter Ferry Boats (IFB) added the intermodal terminal in Bonneuil-Sur-Marne to its Spanish rail service.

Bruyninckx also presented the ‘Total Plan’ for Antwerp, drawn up in collaboration with the private sector, the aim of which is to attract more conventional freight to the port and to develop Antwerp into what he called, “the general cargo port of Europe”.

(Source: Container Management)