As the market leader in frozen food logistics, NORDFROST, headquartered in Schortens in Friesland, has the largest refrigerated storage capacity in Europe at 40 cold storage locations nationwide. As the first investor in the container port Wilhelmshaven, the logistics company has now established itself as a strong player in port logistics and is now planning to enter the ferry business at the company's "home port". NORDFROST will use the Northwest and Southwest Quays in its inner harbor in Wilhelmshaven for that. The 7ha large harbor property 
fulfills ideally all necessary conditions. So it has a quay length of 470m with 8 to 10m water depth and the required open spaces and a RoRo system. The goal is to set up a ferry service with fixed departure times from and to Scandinavia, if possible this year.
The ferry from Wilhelmshaven is an economically sensible transport connection to Scandinavia for trucks, trailers and containers as well as for buses, cars and motorhomes, as it enables the greatest savings in terms of road kilometers for destinations to and from southern Germany and Western Europe compared to other North German ports.
It takes four hours each time to catch the ferry in the harbor. The crossing takes less than 20 hours, so that a ferry allows three departures per week in each direction. Depending on the journey, 60 semi-trailers can be picked up or more vehicles with correspondingly smaller units.
According to company boss Horst Bartels, NORDFROST should quickly succeed in establishing already existing long-term business relationships, e.g. to Norwegian fish producers, and specifically to generate additional freight volume from Scandinavia. "Acquiring Scandinavian transport services from German and European suppliers is not the biggest challenge for us," says Bartels.
The area in the Inner Harbor of Wilhelmshaven, which was intended for the preparation of the ferry, has primarily been used for food handling since the 1970s. In the past, NORDFROST has been handling goods such as skimmed milk powder, butter, cheese, meat, fish, sugar sacks, potatoes and wood transported by bulk carriers via the quay. However, this business has declined sharply, as sea transport of these goods has been largely containerized over time. Today, the company serves among other things for the equipment of offshore vessels.
For about a year, NORDFROST has been using this port area on a temporary basis for project shipments destined for ship transhipment via the 8 km container port Wilhelmshaven. For example, in the inner harbor, machinery and plant components are currently being packaged seaworthy and then stacked in containers, for which the logistics company itself also produces the required export packaging. The interim transport of the heavy goods through the city for loading onto the container ship is complex and should be saved, so that the project shipments will be relocated to the 32ha area of NORDFROST in the logistics area of the container port Wilhelmshaven. The construction work on three halls with overhead cranes for project shipments and heavy cargo and a 1,500m long railroad track connection begin there. With the move, capacity for the establishment of the ferry connection will be available in the Inner Harbor.
So far, the company has invested 104 million euros in container port Wilhelmshaven and created covered storage areas of 70,000 square meters, each of which is intended for 1/3 frozen, fresh and heatable dry storage. On the grounds of the Container Freight Station, NORDFROST operates a container depot in which, in addition to pure storage, empty containers are also washed and repaired. In addition, the paved areas for loading, e.g. of wood from containers on trucks, used. NORDFROST will be launching this month in the container port with another investment project for a fully automated deep-freeze warehouse and four processing lines in the food sector. The 40m high cold storage building is scheduled to go into operation at the beginning of 2021, the heavy cargo bills in mid-2020.
Ultimately, the huge storage capacity of the company in the Wilhelmshaven-Friesland region also provides ideal conditions for the new business area of the ferry business. "Even with the rapidly developing container port of Wilhelmshaven, there are many ways for us to fertilize the new ferry traffic," says Horst Bartels.
Source: NORDFROST