The Port of Rotterdam Authority (HbR) has just announced that the agreements were signed earlier this month, and the first inter-terminal container transports over this 17-km internal, dedicated highway are due by the end of 2023.

In the meantime, the HbR will “realise the connections to the terminal sites.” The bill for these missing links will be footed by the terminals, the port authority reiterated to WorldCargo News. As previously discussed, CER is already physically completed up to the terminals’ fence, at HbR’s expense.

When asked, HbR stated that the agreements do not include any volume commitments, adding the known reality that it is for the shipping lines or for “the cargo” to decide on whether to use the CER to exchange transhipment containers, or continue using the public roads on the Maasvlaktes.

In effect, therefore, and as HbR acknowledges, the agreements cover only the missing links between the terminals and the CER. Significantly, the agreements do not include Euromax Terminal or APM Terminal II – not yet at any rate.

Dutch Customs were the first ever party to sign a CER usage agreement, in June this year, connecting up its Maasvlakte State Inspection Terminal. The traffic is believed to comprise 25-30 “fyco” (physical control) containers per day, from all deepsea terminals combined.

HbR anticipates that a “few hundreds of thousands of containers” will move on the CER in the initial stage, and ECT Delta and RWG will likely deliver the bulk of the CER’s initial business. In the current scenario, their inter-terminal traffic would mainly feature transhipment containers to and from intra-European feeder ships that would call at one of the two terminals only. Inland barges being dispatched on a similar “one stop only” basis, would be the second biggest potential category.

The most tangible secure launch platform for the CER, however, will involve containers moving between RWG, Kramer Group’s barge terminal (DCS) and feeder terminal (RCT) and Kramer’s different Maasvlakte-based EC depots. All containers moving between ECT Delta Peninsula, DCS, RCT and Kramer’s EC depots will continue to move over ECT’s internal road using ECT’s own 10-TEU multi trailer systems (MTS). None of this will migrate onto the CER, as there is no rationale for it, particularly as the CER entail a usage charge.

The Kramer Group has already been feeding RWG with export containers that have been discharged at its DCS and RCT terminals for two years. Drayage of these containers goes by normal public road trucks to the nearby RWG terminal. This traffic has topped 60,000 containers a year.

Kramer’s CEO André Kramer told WorldCargo News that this will all be shifted to the CER. “Furthermore, RWG and we are investigating the same concept for import containers. We’re also seriously considering deploying 4-TEU convoys, whereby the truck will disconnect the two 40/45ft trailers before presenting either of them at one of RWG’s landside stacking blocks.”

He added that all EC traffic between his group’s Maasvlakte depots will be transferred to the CER. The company recently acquired the 165,000 m2 EC depot of Van Dongen & De Roo, which is located on one of the Maasvlakte’s distriparks. It has been renamed Kramer Distripark Depot.

Finally, there is the infrastructure charge, which the HbR is legally bound to charge for usage of the CER; otherwise, transports on the CER would amount to illegal state subsidies. The charge per one-way trip is €5 for vehicles up to 4 TEU and €17 for vehicles carrying between 5 TEU and 10 TEU.

Whichever direction the first trip, the return trip will be charged the same, as HbR wants to encourage movement of loaded containers. Of course, the MTS cannot use the public roads.