Southern Germany News

Marlink subsidiary Telemar has signed a maintenance and service agreement for eight bulk carriers operated by MINSHIP Shipmanagement.The contract will see Telemar provide global service coordination for Bavaria-based MINSHIP. It includes the provision of the latest Telemar World Service (TWS), a web-based tool for managing scheduled and predictive service appointments for the entire MINSHIP fleet, increasing visibility on service intervals and optimizing vessel availability.MINSHIP provides long-term management and logistics solutions for both its vessel owners and cargo trading clients.

Pieter van Oord is candid in discussing the future growth of his storied company’s activities in offshore wind with specific insights on challenging current jobs, Van Oord’s recent order of a massive and groundbreaking Wind Turbine Installation Vessel, and the company’s future working in the United States.Pieter, to start, can you give a ‘By the Numbers’ look at your company today using the metrics of your choice?Well, 2021 was a disappointing year for us. As we said in our annual report…

Cargo vessels cannot navigate much of the Rhine in Germany when fully loaded after dry weather caused a drop in water levels.Traders said that from Duisburg and Cologne to south Germany the Rhine is too shallow for normal sailings, which means vessel operators impose surcharges on freight rates for cargo owners.The Rhine is a major shipping route for commodities such as grains, minerals, coal and fuel products including heating oil.German companies faced supply bottlenecks and…

Global container shipping lines MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has announced the launch of a new dedicated train set-up between Giengen (a.d. Brenz) and Trieste, starting mid of November 2018.This stand-alone solution finally offers an A-B connection between metropolitan area of Ulm and the Adriatic, as the fastest gateway to/from Asia and the Mediterranean.The terminal in Giengen is operated by the leading European home appliance manufacturer BSH Hausgeräte GmbH. BSH has identified the huge potential and benefits to their supply chain and has become shareholder and largest single customer on this product.In times of heavily congested inland terminals and scarcity of truck capacities…

Water levels on the Rhine and Danube in Germany remain low as a drought and heatwave continues and freight vessels cannot sail fully loaded on the rivers, traders said on Monday.The Rhine is too shallow for normal sailings from Duisburg to southern Germany, traders said. All of the German section of the Danube is too shallow for full loads, they said.“Vessels are still sailing but are sometimes operating less than half full,” one vessel broker said. “Water is so shallow in southern…

MINSHIP Shipmanagement, based in southern Germany, has chosen DNV GL’s ShipManager fleet management software solution for its fleet of dry cargo vessels.MINSHIP is optimizing processes as they are managing a growing fleet. A key part of the optimization involves replacement of various separate systems and spreadsheets for ship management activities with a user-friendly and integrated fleet management solution.“Our future outlook focuses on becoming more digitalized,” says MINSHIP Deputy Fleet Director Christian Altmann.

The Rhine in southern Germany remained closed to shipping on Thursday after a sharp rise in water levels and the river is likely to stay closed into the weekend, German authorities said. High water means vessels to not have enough space to pass under bridges. The river is closed to shipping from around Maxau near Karlsruhe to a point near Koblenz, preventing trips to and from Switzerland, the river flood monitoring agency said. Vessels are still able to navigate northern and central sections of the river but have to reduce speed, it said. Water levels are falling again in the southern Rhine. But high water is moving north and could remain at levels preventing shipping into Saturday, the agency forecast.

APM Terminals Vado, Italy Managing Director Paolo Cornetto highlighted the future role of the deepwater APM Terminals Vado facility, now under construction, as a new southern gateway to Central Europe. “We designed our new port around liner customers - and our landside customers – the importers, exporters and truckers - to help them do more business by tapping into the 70 million-member consumer market of northern Italy, southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria and eastern France within an eight hour proximity of our port," he said. "We will offer a fully-automated gate complex – the first of any Italian port - to get truckers in and out faster and safer.

Rolls-Royce said it has acquired from G+L innotec the exclusive rights of use for a new technology for the electrically-assisted charging of off-highway combustion engines in the power range above 450 kW. The new invention from the development and engineering services provider based in Laupheim in southern Germany is protected by patents and has thus not been available on the market to date. Rolls-Royce plans to offer engines of its MTU brand with this technology as of 2021. “Electrically-assisted charging is a milestone on the way to the hybridizing of the engine. Using this technology, it will be possible for us to develop agile, low-consumption engines,” said Dr. Johannes Kech, Director of Development Turbocharging & Fluid Systems at MTU.

The Deutsche Schiffahrts-Agentur (DSA) has been operating an office in Munich since October 2016, meaning it is now represented in four German cities. In addition to the new office in Munich, there are locations in Dusseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, and Stuttgart. Founded in 1987 as a joint venture between the Hamburg Süd shipping group and Deutsche Afrika-Linien (DAL), DSA brokers all Hamburg Süd services for its customers. “DSA stands for personal customer care and a powerful local presence in Germany. At the same time, it provides all the services of one of the largest shipping companies worldwide – this is what constitutes the special added value for its customers,” says Uwe Gaede, General Manager Area Central Europe for Hamburg Süd.

On the European continent, the Alps form a natural barrier for international transport. Containers can be transported to Southern Germany, the Czech Republic or Poland cheaper as well as more sustainably via North European ports than via Southern European ports. This is despite the fact that the container ships between Asia and Europe always take the Suez Canal with the ensuing shorter sailing route to southern ports such as Koper, Constanta and Genoa. Research by Panteia into the environmental footprint logistics chains in Europe proves this. Panteia also has identified opportunities for making the transport more sustainable. Allard Castelein…

In their “Best route market study for containerised imports to South Germany”, published at the beginning of March, the Drewry Group’s supply-chain consultants investigated via which ports containers imported from Shanghai can be transported fastest and cheapest to southern Germany, i.e. Munich, Freiburg, Stuttgart, Ulm and Nuremberg. In almost all markets under consideration, Hamburg comes out better than Rotterdam, Antwerp and the southern ports in the Mediterranean. Contributing to this are numerous direct services, a high departure frequency for container block trains and the fast transit times to/from the Hamburg quay wall. Across the North Range a total of 16 Far East liner services are currently on offer from the major container shipping lines.

Drewry Supply Chain Advisors’ whitepaper finds that the traditional gateway ports in North-West Europe no longer hold all of the trump cards. A recently published whitepaper from Drewry’s Supply Chain Advisors looking at the ‘Best Routes’ for containerised imports into South Germany from China found that for some shippers using Mediterranean gateway ports is a viable alternative to the traditional North-West Europe gateways. To establish shippers’ best-route Drewry examined a variety of routes to find the best mix of cost, transit time and the number of service options. Firstly, the whitepaper looked at the number of maritime services from Shanghai to South Germany’s so-called Northern and Southern gates that were available to the market as of March 2016 (see Table).

VARO Energy, a growing downstream player in the North West European-market, today announced that the group has completed its acquisition of Hydrocarbon Hotel (HCH), a modern hydrocarbon product blending and storage terminal in the port of Amsterdam from Blue Ocean Associates Ltd (BOA). Prior to this, VARO Energy already owned 50% of the shares in the terminal and was fully responsible for its operation. Built in 2011 and operated by 11 employees on site, the facility includes 11 tanks with a total capacity of over 140’000 m3 connected through modern loading and mixing pump equipment. Three dedicated berths which are accessible from every tank at the terminal provide access for sea- and inland-vessels.

Uwe Beckmeyer, Parliamentary Under Secretary of the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, visited Rolls-Royce Power Systems AG in Friedrichshafen. Dr. Ulrich Dohle, company CEO who also chairs the MTU Friedrichshafen subsidiary, explained the low-emission diesel engines of the future. MTU is part of Rolls-Royce Power Systems within the Land & Sea division of Rolls-Royce. MTU's engine portfolio was presented to Under Secretary Beckmeyer in a tour of the Training Centre and Assembly Shop. Beckmeyer is the German government's coordinator for the maritime industry.

The Marseille Fos port authority has set out a vision for growth over the four years to 2018 in a strategic plan that puts developments costing $560 million at the heart of measures to offer clients a dynamic Euro-Mediterranean logistics and industrial cluster. The developments - including new projects and those already in the pipeline – target areas of activity with the greatest potential for strong growth and gaining market share. A key aim is to position the port as a viable European Gateway alternative to ports in the northern range.

Infrastructural bottlenecks in port hinterland traffic are becoming increasingly acute, irrespective of the mode of transport, and are fuelling growing alarm among all the players involved. Such was the universal feeling at the parliamentary evening in Berlin organized by Port of Hamburg Marketing and attended by Peter Ramsauer, Germany’s Minister of Transport, and around 150 high-ranking representatives of the world of politics, business and trade associations. For currently compelling reasons…

European intermodal operator Geest North Sea Line strengthened its sales team in Germany. Jürgen Reinke has been promoted to the position of General Sales Manager for Germany and will be based in Geest's Duisburg office effective 1 April, 2004, and Frank Possel has been appointed as Regional Account Manager, located in Hamburg. Reinke joined Geest in 2002 as Regional Account Manager for the Ruhr area. His early career was in the Hamburg freight forwarding community followed by sales positions with RoRo ferry and trailer operators PTI Portbridge, Norfolkline and DFDS. Possel has joined Geest from Seawheel. "Central and Southern Germany, especially the Ruhr region, have always been important markets for Geest but we now find that we are increasingly competitive in Northern Germany too.

MAN Diesel & Turbo has won an order to supply the main gensets for a multi-layer vessel newbuilding, recently commenced by Lloyd Werft Bremerhaven AG for British client, Ceona. The multi-layer vessel, Ceona Amazon, which will specialize in pipelines and subsea structures, will be equipped with two 9L32/44CR and four 8L32/44CR main gensets, providing a total output of 28MW. Each engine will be constructed at MAN Diesel & Turbo’s Augsburg production facility in southern Germany…

Good connections between seaports and the hinterland are vital for optimizing the logistic chain. The Port of Rotterdam Authority and the Bayernhafen Gruppe are therefore working together in the ‘Bayrolo’ research program. The aim of this cross-border project is to further improve intermodal container transport between Bavaria and the port of Rotterdam. By taking containers off the road and shipping them by barge and rail, cargo flows will be able to continue growing and the port of Rotterdam will be able to offer the German inland ports an alternative seaport.

Rolls-Royce today announced the completion of its acquisition of Rolls-Royce Power Systems (RRPS). The move follows an announcement made on March 7, 2014 that the Board of Management of Daimler AG had decided to exercise the put option relating to its 50% equity interest in RRPS and the announcement on April 16, 2014 that Rolls-Royce and Daimler had agreed on a fair market valuation for the shareholding of €2.43 billion. John Rishton, CEO of Rolls-Royce said, “We are pleased to welcome Rolls-Royce Power Systems fully into Rolls-Royce.

A walk through the ZF Friedrichshafen AG marine propulsion system manufacturing plant in southern Germany does nothing but confirm the commonly held perceptions of German engineering prowess: the facility is clean to a fault; the equipment is modern and well-maintained; the employees are orderly and efficient. While the ZF marine propulsion systems business – which generated a turnover of $336 million in 2013 – is but a sliver of the company’s overall 2013 sales of $22.4 billion…