Boluda Lines starts a new short-sea container service from Santander calling to Tilbury and Rotterdam. A new strategic expansion for Boluda Shipping’s sustainable transport that reinforces the commitment to its customers in Spain, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
The new service, which offers a very competitive alternative to road and ferry transport for containerized goods, with greater reliability and a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions per tonne/mile, starts operating today, Wednesday 3 April 2024.
The line will be operated by a modern feeder vessel with a nominal capacity of 800 TEUs, which will sail weekly from the Santander container terminal. The transit time will be 3 days to the London Container Terminal at the port of Tilbury and a further two days to the port of Rotterdam.
Boluda Maritime Terminal in Santander offers an ideal geographical location for connections with the British Isles and north-western Europe, and has quickly become a very competitive base of operations compared to other local ports. The Cantabrian terminal was inaugurated by Boluda in April 2023, with an investment of almost 40 million euros and with the new extension being carried out this year, it will have the capacity to handle more than 250,000 TEUs per year.
The new line comes on top of the one already operating at full capacity since last September, linking the ports of Santander and Vilagarcía, Leixoes, Setúbal, Cádiz and the Canary Islands with the ports of Liverpool and Dublin.
Ignacio Boluda, Chairman of Boluda Shipping, stated: “Our goal is to provide efficient, reliable and sustainable short-sea shipping services. With our extensive experience and broad knowledge of the local and European markets, we will be able to offer added value to our customers. We are especially proud to showcase the potential of our new container terminal in Santander, a project in which our entire company is strongly involved and in which we have invested all our efforts”.
Gorka Carrillo, CEO of Boluda Shipping, said: “We are very excited about this new project connecting the Iberian Peninsula with the Netherlands via UK, offering again innovative solutions for our customers. Our sustainable multimodal network will thus be extended to one of Europe’s leading short sea shipping markets”.
John Nielsen, Boluda Lines’ Northern Europe Line Manager, declared: “After the launch of our first route to Ireland and UK just a few months ago, it is an important milestone for the company to reach these new markets, reflecting Boluda’s strong commitment to growth in Short-Sea market.
Boluda Lines’ leadership in the transport of goods from the mainland via Canary Islands to West Africa offers importers and exporters in north-west Europe the possibility of extending their connections and carrying out operations in these regions. With extensive experience in these markets, the company operates more than six regular lines in this strategic area.
