In a meeting with Hitra municipal council in Norway, CEO Hallgeir Dahl Olesen of the Faroese shipping company Smyril Line explained the freight route to the continent. According to Norwegian newspaper Hitra-Frøya, Olesen thinks the route is interesting for the shipping company, but so far the shipping has been losing money.
“We are working to persuade more people in the salmon industry to use shipping for export. We are also working to get more Norwegian players to use the route to transport goods from Europe to Norway.”
“At present, the route is not a gold mine. We have invested large sums in this route. But we have faith in the investment and that we will increase the shipping volume. We are also pleased to see that we are reducing the need for land transport and thus removing many trailers from the roads. There is also the fact that when you transport by sea rather than road, you halve the emissions,” the director said according to the minutes of the meeting.
It is the 138.5 meter long freighter “Akranes” that plies the salmon route from Central Norway to the Netherlands. The first salmon was sent in late summer last year. The route goes from Rørvik in central Norway, via the island of Hitra on the way across the North Sea to Rotterdam.
“Our experience since the start is that it has been very tough. We have had to work hard to convince exporters and importers to use sea routes. The major players in imports in Norway often have the goods delivered in Oslo, and then they send the goods out by road from there. The salmon industry has also almost exclusively transported the goods by land,” said Dahl Olesen.
