This month, the 700 TEU, MV ATLANTIC SOUTH feeder vessel made its first call in Vado Ligure, Italy as part of the new Diamond Line Vax service. The VAX service provides a shuttle service to the port of Piraeus which offers main lines to and from the Far and Middle East, India, Oceania, Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The new deep-sea terminal at Vado Ligure, known as the Vado Gateway, is the first semi-automated port in Italy with a fully automated gate and stacking yard. A joint venture with COSCO SHIPPING, the 700m deep-sea berth at Vado Gateway is capable of handling the latest Ultra Large Container Vessels (ULCVs) and up to 1.1 mln TEUs per annum.
Piraeus is the Mediterranean hub of COSCO SHIPPING and Diamond Line, part of the COSCO SHIPPING Group that manages all intra-European connections. A key priority for this new connection, is the transit-time speed between the two container terminals, connecting Vado Gateway with the main lines to and from the Far and Middle East, India, Oceania and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Vessels on Maersk’s Med-Middle East-India ME2 service call at Vado Gateway since February this year. Starting this month, Maersks Med-North America MMX (L75 feeder) Service will move from Genoa to Vado Ligure (Barcelona, Vado-Ligure, La Spezia, For sur Mer, Barcelona, Algeciras, Port Tangier, Barcelona).
The Vado Ligure Port complex is accessible via 14 reversible gate lanes, and truck turn times at terminal are kept to a minimum and greater flexibility is offered through an advanced appointment system, TERMPoint, available online or via an App. The appointment system is fully integrated with Terminal Operating System. As trucks arrive at the port, the license plate of the vehicle and the container number are registered using optical character recognition (OCR). If all previously submitted documentation is complete, the truck is automatically granted access to operating areas.
Through the application, truckers can view and change the time of their appointments, check any tasks assigned, enter all the information on the container required before arrival and, for those who use multiple vehicles, change the license plate number directly in the App, displaying the appointments corresponding to each vehicle used in real time. During the current pandemic the App also helps reduce face-to-face contact at the gate.
A new off-dock rail facility for both port terminals (4 lanes, 450m length) provides rapid access for up to 14 trains per day, to central and northern Europe such as Switzerland, Germany and France, as well as regions in Northern Italy, such as Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna. APM Terminals Vado Ligure has set itself a target of moving 40 percent of containers arriving or departing from Vado Gateway by rail.