Denmark’s only cement factory is located in Aalborg. It provides a lot of seaborne transportation between Danish ports. This is one of two Klaveness-owned vessels, which at present handle the many tonnes of goods.

From sea to road

Short Sea traffic in Denmark really is a sad story! Despite a massive coastline with a number of possibilities, more and more traffic has been shifted to lorries and road transport. Like someone told the writer of these lines, soon the situation will be like that in America some years ago: all kinds of transports of less than 10,000 tonnes will have eighteen rubber wheels!

Politicians use the words “from road to sea” whenever speeches are given, but in practical daily business the same politicians make things complicated for sea transports. Probably without being aware of the fact, the politicians are even trying to move traffic from sea to road transport!

How is this possible? In Denmark, which is a kind of middle country in Scandinavia and a gateway to Europe, the politicians build bridges. The first ones were the Great Belt Bridge, Öresundsbron, and within the next two decades the Fehmarn Bridge will also be built. The argument used at all times is better conditions for transit traffic from industrial Scandinavia to customers in Europe.

With the building of these bridges, the day-to-day business is becoming increasingly difficult for the companies running seaborne transports. Stena Line, DFDS Tor Line, Color Line and Scandlines all transport industrial exports from Scandinavia to Europe without touching Danish soil. This signifies much less pollution, much less noise and dramatically lower fuel consumption. It is an elegant way of passing Denmark without harming the country.

However, the fact that thousands of tonnes of goods are shipped on lorries and trailers every day along the Danish coasts seems to have escaped the greater public and political life.

Success
There are success stories in short sea traffic in Denmark, even though seaborne domestic traffic has decreased dramatically over the past three or four decades. One of the success stories is the transport of cement in bulk from the only Danish cement factory in Aalborg.

From that factory cement has been distributed to all of Denmark by way of seaborne transports.

This has been the case since the beginning of last century. Since 1938, cement has been transported as bulk cargo in specialised vessels lifting cement to depots in Copenhagen, Århus, Kolding, Aabenraa and Odense. Two 6,500 DWT vessels are sailing on a weekly basis to all the ports for discharge. Until 2002, the cement manufacturer was sailing under its own flag and funnels, but three ships were sold and then chartered back.

	The company behind the “Østersøen” sent her to the breakers last summer, as the competition from road transport is too strong.

Another successful business with seaborne traffic is the liner service to Bornholm from Hundested, Aalborg and Kolding. Since the mid-sixties, a small ro-ro vessel has been sailing from Bornholm with products (fish and pottery) to the mainland ports and returned with all kinds of supplies to the island in the Baltic. Until last year it was a two-ship operation, but serious damage to the main engine on the Østersøen forced the company to sell the ship for scrap.

Since then, only the Bornholm has been trading on the route. Even this trade is being threatened by the new, bigger ro-pax ferries owned by BornholmsTrafikken. They will be in service from next spring from Køge to Rønne.

By then the Bornholm will have to face the fact that new, bigger and more efficient ferries will be needed to meet the demand for more volume on the cargo decks. And trade will surely be taken from the little freight service.

Wind turbines
Another one of the glorious stories of seaborne transportation is the shipment of wings for wind turbines. The Danish manufacturer Vestas has a factory which produces wings in Nakskov at the old shipyard ground, where shipbuilding stopped in 1986 with the rebuild of the train ferry Trekroner. Wings from the factory are often shipped by coaster to Århus before being sent on to foreign countries. A number of wind turbines were sold to Japan and shipped directly from Århus. One of the operators of the coaster is Svend Flyvbjerg, who says:

– The transport is nice and easy, but our problem is that we can only charge the same rates as a lorry, and that is not enough to run a modern coaster. We think it is much safer to ship 35 metre long wings by sea than to have them on the motorway.

New service
After the setback in Esbjerg, where the port along with the port of Le Havre in France and an operator tried to set up a new ro-ro service, the route now seems to have attracted another operator. In the beginning of January, Belgian giant Cobelfret S.A. opened a service from Esbjerg to Zeebrügge (where Cobelfret already has a terminal and shore staff) with one weekly sailing on the Swedish-flagged ro-ro vessel Anna Oden.

The German road tax, Maut, has made the route interesting, as a trailer or/and truck shipment from Esbjerg to Zeebrügge now can continue to mainland Europe without being affected by the Maut. Zeebrügge has excellent connections with the motorways in France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy without crossing German territory. Cobelfret and Esbjerg are hoping that the route will gain a good market share and increase sailing to several times per week. If traffic increases, Cobelfret is ready to put more ships on the route. The Anna Oden can carry 160 trailer units per sailing, which takes 18–20 hours.

Ferries and islands
The attraction of lorries can be seen on a number of Danish islands, where new ferries have been inaugurated in the past couple of decades.

The old, and often smaller, ferries have been replaced by new, larger ferries. The argument is that the old ferries cannot carry the heavy lorries that occasionally arrive with a load for the island. The ferry company – often owned by the municipality – then orders a new ferry. The new ferry is often bigger than the old one, and naturally more expensive as regards daily running costs. Thus, when the new and more expensive ferry is ready, there is a heavy demand for more volume in cargo, which in these cases means more lorries. This gives customers on the island no alternative other than to use a lorry on the ferry instead of hiring a small coaster for the same task. This is true of nearly all categories of goods, from oil-products to supermarket supplies.

Oil products
In the past there was lively domestic traffic in oil products serving the oil companies in Denmark. Three refineries could be found in Denmark: Esso in Kalundborg, Gulf Oil on Stignæs and Shell in Fredericia. Shell lifted their products to storage tanks on Sjælland using smaller tankers, as did the other companies.

In the early 1970’s, port administration in Denmark decided that wharfage should be paid by cubic metre for liquid oil products. Until then fuel in all forms had been free of wharfage in Danish ports. This was a dramatic increase in prices, but the oil companies got together and made an exchange agreement including a great deal of co-operation between the companies.

Esso delivered products to Shell’s customers on Sjælland and Shell delivered to Esso’s customers in Jylland and so on. Instead of shipping from each refinery to storage, the oil products were shipped directly from the competitor’s refinery to the company’s own customers by lorry. This was indeed a sensible way of beating the wharfage, but a major blow to the shipping business.

Tanker operator Herning Shipping has been sailing for the oil company Statoil for years, lifting products to storage facilities in Struer at the western end of Limfjord. Products for the storage come from Fredericia and have lately been lifted on the Vitta Theresa, capable of carrying 2,500 tonnes of diesel and gasoline. From Struer the oil products have been distributed to private houses and filling stations in the area, but last year Statoil announced that it would change to direct distribution from the refinery in Fredericia to Struer on tanker trucks.

– Not a very environmental decision considering one ship is going to be replaced by 100 lorries every time the same amount of goods goes to Struer, says Technical Director Tom Bach Mortensen of Herning Shipping.
After some protesting the plans were postponed for the time being, but personnel at Herning Shipping believe they might have to face facts relatively soon.

//Bent Mikkelsen