The enterprise no longer sees itself in a position to bear the additional costs caused by the lengthy waiting times in the Port of Rotterdam entirely on its own.
“Since January the barges of the Contargo fleet have had to wait increasingly long times for the loading and unloading process”, says Cok Vinke, Co-Managing Director of Contargo Waterway Logistics.
“Throughput times of 50 hours, with peaks of up to 90 hours, are no longer unusual.”
As a result, processing is taking more than one-third longer on average than normal. Due to the bottlenecks, many export containers cannot be unloaded at the prearranged terminal. Contargo tries to adhere to its schedules by chartering additional tonnage.
“Regrettably, all our discussion with the various bodies concerned in the Port of Rotterdam have not led to any improvement and as it looks at present, the situation cannot be expected to improve in the foreseeable future”, Cok Vinke says. “We can no longer bear the entire additional costs, so we are forced to pass on part of them to our customers.”
Contargo will levy the Congestion Surcharge from 15 April 2015, for barge departures scheduled on that day. The surcharge will apply for all consignments, irrespective of the starting point.
If the processing situation deteriorates further, the company reserves the right to recalculate the congestion surcharge and adapt it accordingly. The surcharge will stay in place until processing times in the Port of Rotterdam become considerably shorter.
“In the Port of Antwerp, a situation is developing which is similar to the one in Rotterdam”, Cok Vinke says. “We are also keeping a close watch on the throughput times of our barges there and we wish to state that if the situation there should become worse, we shall have to introduce a congestion surcharge for that seaport, too.”