As has been touched upon in previous newsletters, the extreme weather situation in Northern Europe in recent weeks has meant that the industry is facing rising challenges in maintaining schedules and avoiding delays. The challenges mainly concerns the Baltic region, Poland, Russia and Finland, however, the base ports in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have also been affected.
At Unifeeder we always have our customers’ needs at heart, thus we continuously strive to avoid delays and ensure that our customers receive the best service possible. In order to honour our long term commitment to our customers, Unifeeder will implement a Winter Contingency Plan, which increases tonnage deployment on relevant routes, as an effort to maintain our schedule and diminish delays. Thus, we do not take the situation lightly, and assure you that the situation considered to be very urgent and has the highest priority.
Moreover, the situation is particularly challenging in Finland, as it includes both very extreme weather conditions, an overtime ban in all Finnish ports, as well as declarations of strikes both from members of the Finnish Transport Workers’ Union AKT as well as icebreaker crews that are members of the Finnish Seamen’s Union. The possible strikes are expected to start in the beginning of March 2010, unless an agreement is reached between the different parties prior to this. In order to ensure that our customers' cargo flow going forward, Unifeeder has decided to invest in upgrading our tonnage deployment and thereby protect the integrity of our service deliveries.
While Unifeeder is doing everything within its power to be in forefront of the situation, and diminish the impact that the weather situation as well as the possible strikes might have on our schedule and service, we urge our customers to assist us in balancing our capacity levels, by enabling us to utilise our southbound capacity.
Unifeeder is a committed carrier, which is determined to sustain a high service level and a strong and positive relationship to our customers. It is imperative to us to deliver the best service to our customers, thus, we are striving to minimise any possible delays due to the challenging situation by increasing tonnage.
We will keep you updated on the situation on a continuous basis.
