Hong Kong's Hutchison shuts down Amsterdam terminal as volumes collapse
HONG KONG's Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) is closing its Amsterdam Container Terminal (ACT) in January, ending four years of falling volumes rendering the facility unused after it failed to attract new business.
According to a report by Alphaliner, ACT lost its last mainline customer at the beginning of 2010, when the Grand Alliance downsized its Far East-Europe services and scrapped its former EU-1 service.
The 54-hectare terminal opened in 2001 as Ceres Paragon with a capacity to handle 1.2 million TEU annually along its 400-metre berth and a marginal berth of 615 metres alongside Amsterdam's port of Amerikahaven.
It is equipped with nine gantry cranes, but four of the cranes have been sold off and the remainder are to be disposed of soon. Its fleet of 39 Nelcon straddle carriers have been removed, with some dispatched to HPH's ECT Home Terminal in Rotterdam.
ACT is located 15 kilometres from the North Sea to which it is connected by the Noordzeekanaal and the Ijmuiden locks, three hours away from the pilot station. Due to the size of the locks and the canal depth, the terminal is restricted to ships of 8,000 TEU or less, though it was designed to handle larger ships.
The report said that "HPH had planned to operate ACT as a small, mature deep sea container terminal, which would be kept operational until the arrival of a new super post-panamax lock at IJmuiden, due by 2019. However, declining prospects for the terminal and increased competition from ports in the North Continent forced HPH to shut the facility".
Date：2012.9.6
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