Swiss Rhine Ports and Rotterdam Renew Cooperation

In the presence of Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga, Head of the Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications, the Swiss Rhine Ports, the Logistics Cluster Region Basel, and the Port of Rotterdam today renewed their cooperation agreement. With the signing of a renewed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), they will intensify their efforts in the coming years towards digitalization, green energy carriers, and the sustainable development of the important freight corridor Rotterdam-Basel-Genoa.

(Rotterdam/Basel) The (Memorandum of Understanding – MOU) renews the agreements made in 2016. New topics include the use of hydrogen as a future fuel for freight transport, the circular economy, and efficient handling of inland shipping. Further coordination between the digital port management systems RheinPorts Information System (Swiss Rhine Ports) and Portbase (Rotterdam) remains a focus of future exchanges. Additionally, the ports are keen to promote freight transport by inland ship and rail through the expansion of intermodal logistics infrastructures, as is being done with the trimodal container terminal Gateway Basel-Nord with ship connections (Port Basin 3).

50 Percent on the Rhine

The transport volume between Switzerland and Rotterdam is handled by inland shipping for over 50 percent; one third by train and only 1 percent by truck.
Photo: © Swiss Rhine Ports / Caption: (from left to right) Deborah Strub (Chairwoman of the Logistics Cluster Region Basel), Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga, Matthijs van Doorn (Commercial Director of the Port of Rotterdam), and Martina Gmür (Chairwoman of the Board of Swiss Rhine Ports)