Haropa Ports: investing EUR 6 million to cover 14 days
No, this is not about the Corona virus. This time, we are talking about the French national strike - which also affects Haropa Ports, Le Havre. After 14 full days of loss due to the strike in December and January, the end of the strike for Le Havre seems to be approaching, as Laurent Foloppe, Sales & Marketing Director of Haropa, told the ITJ in a telephone conference.
The port community of Le Havre has now introduced a number of measures to regain old clients - and win new ones. The signatories of Le Havre have agreed to cover the additional storage costs for containers on Le Havre’s terminals for December/January, corresponding to 100,000 containers or EUR 30 per day per container. The Port of Le Havre is contributing EUR 18 per container and terminal operators EUR 12 per container. This measure represents a new investment of EUR 3 million.
Furthermore, the pilotage, towing and mooring services have jointly decided to apply a 10% discount to any new service calling at Le Havre for the period from 1 April to 31 December 2020. This commercial measure concerns containerships and ro-ro vessels.
In addition, a 30% reduction of port dues for shipping companies during the strike period, an investment of EUR 2 million, will be applied for carriers introducing new services from April 2020 on for a period of four years.
Further measures will be proposed to shipping companies that could not benefit from the recent port duty reduction. Initiatives to boost ro-ro activity are being discussed with sector stakeholders. Altogether, the port community will invest EUR 6.1 million in this approach "dedicated to recover the confidence of our clients." (cd)