Unaccompanied freight specialist CLdN has announced that it is increasing capacity on its ferry services to the UK and Ireland. The return of WILHELMINE and MASSIMO MURA (now renamed CADENA 3) from charter means that the company can increase the number of sailings on some of its routes from Zeebrugge.
The Zeebrugge to Dublin route is increasing frequency to three sailings per week. CLdN is also adding an additional Friday sailing to its Zeebrugge – Killingholme service. This takes the number of sailings offered on the route to seven per week. Shippax reports that CADENA 3 will operate the additional sailings to both Dublin and Killingholme.
CLdN’s Zeebrugge – Purfleet service will also get an extra weekend sailing. This means that customers will be offered twelve sailings per week on the Thames corridor route.
Increased Demand
According to CLdN, its services have benefited from an additional increase in demand for unaccompanied freight transport from the end of 2020. In the post-Brexit era, the company has also noticed customers switching to direct services to bypass the UK landbridge to Ireland.
CLdN has already significantly increased capacity on both its UK and Irish routes prior to todays announcement. This includes the addition of Cork as a new port on their network. The company has also pledged that it will continue to add additional capacity and frequency if demand requires it to.
A CLdN spokesman commented on the expansion of the UK and Irish services:
”Once more CLdN shows its ability to react directly to market developments in order to keep serving its customers with a robust, reliable and cost efficient transport solution. We are poised to maintain our leading role in unaccompanied short sea shipping and will keep interacting with our valued customers in order to meet their expectations.“
More Additional Ships to Come
CLdN is expecting two additional “H5” 5,000+ lane metre capacity ships to be delivered from Hyundai Mipo later in 2021. It is also understood that the charter of the 1,760 lane metre capacity SEVERINE to Gruppo Grendi has ended.
Additionally, there have also been suggestions that GIUSEPPE LUCCHESI (ex FADIQ) could also return to CLdN in the near future. The ship has been on charter to Moby/Tirrenia who used her on their Livorno – Catania – Malta service. That route was closed with immediate effect this week as part of a cost reduction strategy at the company.
About CLdN RoRo
Although not a household name, CLdN RoRo is part of a huge concern which also offers bulk shipping, door to door delivery, and port operations. CLdN Ro-Ro itself operates 30+ vessels on short-sea Ro-Ro services, offering over 130 sailings per week. Amongst the ports the company links are Zeebrugge, Rotterdam, London, Killingholme, Liverpool, Dublin, Cork, Gothenburg, Esbjerg, Santander and Porto.
CLdN RoRo first started by offering sailings between the UK and Continental Europe from December 1974. The company is also known as Cobelfret in some markets and handles in excess of 1 million freight units per annum.
