#ferry- Stena Line which also operates a UK landbridge route network on the North Sea to mainland Europe, announced earlier this year an increase in its freight capacity on the Harwich-Rotterdam-Europoort route by replacing the current two RoRo vessels with two larger ships.

The ferry company has now confirmed plans to also increase capacity on the Killingholme-Rotterdam route in January 2018. Consequently this will increase its total capacity through Europoort by approximately 20%.

A decision has been taken to introduce a larger RoRo vessel on the North Sea to replace the current chartered ship, Caroline Russ, when its contract expires in January 2018.

Next year Stena Line will also reposition the RoRo ships between the Europoort routes to further optimise the available capacity. On the Killingholme-Rotterdam route, which was 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 on the Harwich-Rotterdam route in January 2018 and join former Irish Sea freightferry, Stena Scotia. 

Annika Hult, Trade Director at Stena Line North Sea commented: “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 utilisation on both routes. We also see a good development in Freight volumes arriving to Europoort by train. We believe that the combination of rail and RoRo transportation will 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 plans.”