European short-sea shipping experiment fails

Short-sea shipping proved to be a step too far for the European logistics sector which has had to find other ways of moving cargo more efficiently from origin to end user. According to Gert-Jan Nieuwenhuizen, director international projects with the Port of Amsterdam, the idea of short-sea shipping – known more widely as the Marco Polo project – was a major project from the European Union White Paper on addressing the faster movement of cargo. “The belief was that shortsea shipping would be the answer but the logistics sector is extremely conservative by its very nature and not eager to change or adopt innovative solutions.” The goal of short-sea shipping is to cut down on road infrastructure costs and congestion at ports and increase cargo flows on sea rather than road. But it was a modal shift too complex for shippers, he said. “Cargo owners were comfortable with calling on their trucking companies to move their cargo from Spain to Portugal. Asking them to suddenly put all that cargo back on vessels was not realistic as they found short sea shipping too complex and ultimately it led to the failure of the concept.”