Flemish car terminals are struggling with increasing congestion
AUTOLOGISTICS
In port terminals in Antwerp and Zeebrugge, some 100,000 vehicles are waiting for delivery to end customers. There is hardly any capacity to park more cars. The bottleneck is the transport to the car distributors.
Those who ordered a new car already had to take into account a longer waiting time due to delays in the production of computer chips. But now the terminals are full because there are not enough truckers to transport the trucks. During the corona crisis, capacity was reduced and many truckers switched to another sector. The recruitment of new employees is proceeding in dribs and drabs.
Transport by train is hardly an alternative, because trains for energy supply (natural gas and coal) are given priority, especially on the German rail network.
This year, Chinese manufacturers will export 200,000 to 300,000 cars to Europe. Those numbers could double by 2023. Zeebrugge is by far the largest European import port for cars. Annually, 2.5 million cars are loaded and unloaded in Zeebrugge and Antwerp. In the future, most new Chinese cars will be fully electric. With this in mind, ICO has already installed eleven wind turbines and three hundred charging stations in Zeebrugge.
AUTOLOGISTICS
In port terminals in Antwerp and Zeebrugge, some 100,000 vehicles are waiting for delivery to end customers. There is hardly any capacity to park more cars. The bottleneck is the transport to the car distributors.
Those who ordered a new car already had to take into account a longer waiting time due to delays in the production of computer chips. But now the terminals are full because there are not enough truckers to transport the trucks. During the corona crisis, capacity was reduced and many truckers switched to another sector. The recruitment of new employees is proceeding in dribs and drabs.
Transport by train is hardly an alternative, because trains for energy supply (natural gas and coal) are given priority, especially on the German rail network.
This year, Chinese manufacturers will export 200,000 to 300,000 cars to Europe. Those numbers could double by 2023. Zeebrugge is by far the largest European import port for cars. Annually, 2.5 million cars are loaded and unloaded in Zeebrugge and Antwerp. In the future, most new Chinese cars will be fully electric. With this in mind, ICO has already installed eleven wind turbines and three hundred charging stations in Zeebrugge.