AS a plea for subsidies failed to produce results, the French LD Lines has withdrawn its thrice-weekly "Motorway of the Sea" (MoS) service between Nantes-Saint-Nazaire in France and Gijon in Spain because it is financially unsustainable.
Last month, LD Lines managing director Christophe Santoni said the service would end without public assistance which has sustained it for four years - part of a fashionable environmental drive to get trucks off the road.
Launched in September 2010, the service was a pioneer of the MoS eco-friendly freight transport concept focusing on taking trucks off the road.
Speaking to Lloyd's Loading List, Mr Santoni said: "The service is suspended. Discussions continue, but we remain short of finding solution that would allow a resumption."
Top 10 Baltic box ports hit 3.9 million TEU, up 1.4pc in first half
THE top 10 Baltic ports posted a 1.4 per cent increase in first half year-on-year container volume to 3,988,407 TEU, reports the Baltic Transport Journal.
Poland's Port of Gdynia had the fastest growth, up 21.9 per cent to 419,763 TEU, according to Port Monitor figures, followed by the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, up 16.5 per cent to 179,765 TEU. Then came Denmark's main Port of Aarhus, up 15.5 per cent to 238,450 TEU and the Lithuanian Port of Klaipeda, up 11.1 per cent to 218,556 TEU.
Poland's Gdansk, despite having a low growth rate among the top 10, had the second largest increase in absolute numbers, rising 7.4 per cent to 621,966 TEU.
Suffering downturns were Finland's Port of HaminaKotka, off 9.9 per cent to 291,786 TEU; Gothenburg, down 8.4 per cent to 424,000 TEU; St Petersburg, down 5.1 per cent to 1,204,888 TEU and Helsinki, down four per cent to 204,594 TEU.
Container traffic between Hamburg and the Baltic Sea region increased 4.5 per cent year on year in the first half with volumes reaching 1.17 million TEU, of which 700,00 TEU was shipped between Hamburg and Russia, Poland and Finland.
Traffic on the Hamburg-Poland route increased 33.5 per cent year on year to 200,000 TEU while volume between Hamburg and Finland grew 9.4 per cent to 200,000 TEU, while Hamburg-Russia trade fell 3.8 per cent to 300,000 TEU.