Icelandic containerline Samskip has introduced a pre-Brexit surcharge as the company expects increasing demand for shipping services to the UK.
According to Samskip, it currently operates service with 14 weekly sailings linking Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Gent to the UK ports of Hull, Tilbury, Grangemouth and Belfast.
The company has seen the demand for transport services avoiding the ferry ports of southern England increasing. Furthermore, the company foresees that demand will outstrip supply before abruptly reducing in April as stock is first built up in February and March and then consumed in April before a restart at some point in late April/May.
“To minimize the impact of the Brexit exceptional situations, we redeploy assets to alternative uses where possible. However, with all the measures taken we cannot anticipate all the consequences of this process, but we need to be sure that we will protect a reliable service for our customers and as such it is imperative to mitigate the risk by introducing a fee – the Pre-Brexit Peak Volume Surcharge,” Samskip said in a release.
According to the company, it has secured access to additional vessel as well as rail and truck capacity to be able to scale up throughout the supply chain in preparation for Brexit.
