The Danish shipping company Maersk is sending the first container ship through the Arctic Ocean. The shipping company does this in order to discover whether a northern sailing route between Asia and Europe is possible.
The route has a number of benefits. For example, it is shorter, explains Bart Kuipers, a port economist and a seaports and logistics adviser at Erasmus UPT. For a number of goods, such time savings are crucial. Moreover, bigships navigate much slower nowadays because of the high fuel prices and, as such, a shorter route will be advantageous. The route is however not accessible to all kinds of ships yet. A special ship had to be created which is able to handle temperatures up to minus 25 degrees Celsius and which has icebreakers. Furthermore, the ships cannot have too many containers. There are namely no intermediate container ports. As such, the route is still mainly for ships with bulk goods.
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Listen to the entire interview on BNR Nieuwsradio d.d. 18 August 2018