BRUSSELS: Should you have seen a red-painted high-sided box shaped ship off the Irish east coast in recent weeks, it was likely to have been a vehicle-carrier, writes Jehan Ashmore.
The ship been the 750 unit vehicle carrier Weser Highway which last month made a first call to Dublin Port from Zeebrugge, Belgium. She is operating a new Ireland-Belgium service for “K-Line”. A German shipping company whose name in full is: K Line European Sea Highway Services (KESS). The abbreviation is emblazoned on the hull.
A sister of the vehicle-carrier, the 99.9m Schelde Highway is this afternoon circling at sea in heavy weather off Greystones. The elder sister is due to Dublin Port but not until tonight. In the meantime, forecast for today in this area is for a southeast gale force 8 or strong gale force 9 and gusty.
KESS have a 10 strong fleet transporting up to 800.000 units a year. The new Irish connections operate to a weekly ro-ro service carrying cars, vans, trucks and high and heavy cargo. The new service will connect Dublin Port to all major ocean roro carriers in northern Europe for onward shipping around the world.
When calling to the capital port, Weser Highway berthed at Alexandra Basin west along Ocean Pier where a larger linkspan was installed in recent years. This facility is frequently in use by another operator, CLnD /Colbelfret whose service also connects to Belgium and neighbouring Netherlands.
Prior to this linkspan was an ageing ferry ramp and structure. This linkspan had served among operators, Seaspeed Ferries which in the 1970’s ran a Dublin-Barry route. From the south Wales port, Seaspeed added a second route to Cork for client Ford that had an assembly plant along the city quays.
The modern investment at Dublin Port infrastructure was to accommodate increasingly bigger ships and attract new business. This paid off in the form of con-ro vessels when CLnD RoRo launched in 2010 a new link to and from Zeebrugge. This service is complemented by a longer route using the Port of Rotterdam.
Mazarine, namesake of a leadclass con-ro class made a maiden voyage to Dublin that year. This was reported for Ships Monthly, February 2010 issue, having made a trip into the port for the occasion as the sleek ship sailed into the basin.
Up until then the Luxembourg based operator had served its routes out of Rosslare Europort. The Wexford port however were to lose out given the newly redeveloped setup up in the capital port which is only a few hours passage time along the the east coast.
