Freight News, Sea

Small is beautiful for Stena North Sea

[ August 17, 2012   //   Chris ]

Stena Line is to replace its Stena Carrier and Stena Freighter on the Rotterdam-Harwich route with two new, but smaller vessels chartered from Cobelfret. The Capucine and Severine join the fleet on a five-year contract.

Stena Line area director for the North Sea business area, Pim de Lange, said: “The market conditions for the Rotterdam-Harwich route have been very tough during the past few years.” There was a very competitive environment on the North Sea and financial instability and recession throughout Europe. “This has led to a low capacity utilisation of our two current vessels and a consequential poor financial development for the route,” he added.

The two new vessels for the route were built in 2011 and 2012 and have a deck capacity of 1,760 lane metres.

De Lange concluded: ““We need to improve efficiency and reduce our operational costs. We will have smaller and cheaper tonnage and, at the same time, we can carry the same volumes that we have today and deliver the same service.”

Tags: Stena