Logistics operators could save time and money by transferring shipments between Walloon ports, such as Liege, and the large port of Antwerp to the north by barge rather than road. It takes 12 hours for shipments to reach Antwerp from Liege by canal; but it can take up to three days to arrange for a lorry to move a container.

“The canal could easily handle four or five times the volume,” says Christian Charlier from Wallonia’s waterways promotion office. “The shortage of lorries is seldom taken into consideration. And yet a barge that leaves Liege by 6pm can be in Antwerp by 6am,” he says. Further time can be saved by clearing customs in Liege rather than in Antwerp, which is already running close to its capacity.

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Antwerp’s capacity will double in size to about 10 million containers per year when a new dock opens in late 2005. In the meantime, says Claire Ghyselen of Wallonia’s Office for Foreign Investors, the ports of Liege and Antwerp are working together to increase their joint capacity. “Collaboration between Antwerp and Liege ports is very close because they need each other. Antwerp needs Liege because it cannot absorb all the flows on its own.”

Another factor in Ličge’s favour is the widespread availability of brown-field sites available for development along the waterways that could be easily integrated into the transport system. At the last count, there were something like 1050 hectares of development sites remaining in Wallonia.

Ličge Autonomous Port Authority manages 26 individual ports totalling some 260 hectares along the Meuse river and Albert canal which connect directly to the major international ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam, as well as to the entire network of inland waterways. The port has been expanding slowly but steadily for the past several years.

(Office de Promotion des Voies Navigables, tel +32 42 20 87 50; fax +32 42 20 87 60; e-mail opvn@met.wallonie.be)

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