A new weekly shipping service serving Scotland with mainland Europe will also assist in boosting the country's whisky industry, port bosses claim, writes Jehan Ashmore.
BG Freight Line’s Greenock-Rotterdam route will deliver in supporting such trade exports to the major Dutch port, with its extensive global links, according to the Peel Ports Group, which operate the Clydeside terminal downriver of Glasgow.
It was on Friday when the BG Emerald first berthed at Peel Port (Clydeport) Greenock Ocean Container terminal, which marked the maiden launch of the regular served route from the Scottish west coast, where Peel Ports invested £25m in two Irish-manufactured 72m high ship-to-shore (S2S) cranes, as Afloat previously reported.
The Peel Ports Group, which is the UK’s second largest port operator, says the new Dutch route could prove a valuable direct link to Europe for independent distillers in Scotland, given the current challenging market conditions facing the industry.
In addition, the return of this service by BG Freight Line (a subsidiary of the Group) will also benefit related sectors, bottlers, and supply chains.
Also operating on the new Scotland-Netherlands route will be another 1,002 TEU capacity container ship, the BG Jade (as seen above), which last month took anchorage in Dublin Bay. A further two containerships of the same Ireland-Max series, BG Diamond BG Sapphire, were also built in China.
As part of the Butterly 2-liner route rotation, BG's Emerald and Jade also call to the Irish capital (at the MTL Terminal operated by Peel Ports Group), along with Belfast Harbour and Liverpool.
Aside from exporting whisky, the port group’s investment of shoreside infrastructure is to boost overall trade and open new markets for the Scottish economy.
Greenock terminal is also where BG Freight Line has connecting liner feeder services to Dublin Port and the Port of Cork that form part of the company’s northern Europe short sea route network.
This morning in Dublin Bay two more but larger BG container ships were present: BG Green was outbound of Dublin heading for Rotterdam, while inbound was BG Orange. These ‘Colour’ class containers operate on the Butterfly 1 service calling to Greenock, Dublin, Belfast, Liverpool, Southampton, and London Gateway (LGW) terminal on the Thames estuary, which is operated by DP World with global links to all continents.
The 1,380 TEU capacity container ship BG Orange arrived from LGW and involved a pilot dispatched from the orange-and-black painted Dublin Port cutter.
The other pair that form this quartet are the BG Blue and BG Red, respectively, and operate other routes as part of seven-liner feeder services served by a fleet of 15 containers ships connecting 29 ports and terminals across northern Europe, including Belgium and France.
