Birds and the new container terminal at Rotterdam

Dear (s)          Yet another interesting Marine News.

Rotterdam is the 2nd-largest city by population in the Netherlands, located in the province of South Holland in the west of the country. For those interested in Marine, it has a Port which is the largest in Europe and one of the busiest ports.  Rotterdam is situated on the banks of the river Nieuwe Maas ('New Meuse'), one of the channels in the delta formed by the Rhine and Meuse rivers. An aerial view :

 Sea gulls are typically medium to large birds, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings.  Those of you in the habit of reading English stories would remember the following lines …..

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the  water.  and  the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through  the  air,  till  a  crowd  of  a  thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.  Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonour. .............  Most gulls don't bother to learn more  than  the  simplest  facts  of  flight - how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls,  it  is not flying that matters, but eating.  **{see foot note}

This is not to be the story of sea gull but is about the peculiar delay the construction of container terminal is facing …………………………

A new container terminal for feeders and inland navigation vessels is being constructed at the Maasvlakte in Rotterdam. The Port of Rotterdam (PoR) will invest € 15 million in the construction of a 410-meter-long quay for the terminal. The RCT will have a capacity of approximately 300,000 containers  a year and can accommodate vessels with a draft of up to 10 meters. A container terminal is a facility where cargo containers are transshipped between different transport vehicles, for onward transportation. Maritime container terminals tend to be part of a larger port, and the biggest maritime container terminals can be found situated around major harbours. Inland container terminals tend to be located in or near major cities, with good rail connections to maritime container terminals.  These terminals also provide storage facilities for both loaded and empty containers.  The new terminal being built in Rotterdam primarily for ThyssenKrupp Steel’s (TKS) Brazilian slab imports has sustained some delay. Works have had to be suspended to protect nesting seabirds.  This terminal is being built on reclaimed land in the Mississippi dock on the Maasvlakte with TKS as the launch customer. The 12-hectare terminal  will have 500m of the total 1500m of new quay wall. It will handle the 2.1 Mtpa of steel slabs that TKS will import into Germany from a Company that is scheduled to start production in April 2009.

It is stated that  the delay will mainly affect the quay wall and quayside construction works.  The delay stems from the fact that seagulls had already begun hatching at the site – still a stretch of deep water one year before – when quay wall construction was about to be started. Dutch law states that in such cases breeding birds must not be disturbed - a case of squatters' rights, as it were.

 A busy container terminal :

Did this generate some interest ?????  Look forward to your views !!!!!!

With regards

S Sampathkumar.

** Those words marked were the starting lines of the famous “Jonathan Livingstone” of Richard Bach.

Circulated to my group on 15/07/2008 and posted on the  blog now.