Record shipment of pig iron expected at Port of Rotterdam

The Port of Rotterdam has stated that this is the first time Austria’s Carbones Holding GmbH has carried a shipment of this size in a single transport.

Typically, bulkers only ship between 30 000 - 35 000 t of pig iron at a given time.

Sebastian Brunner, Trader for Carbones, stated: “[This] has never been done before with pig iron. We’re very happy to have pulled it off. Organising, co-ordinating and planning a shipment is a complicated process that requires close collaboration between all of the parties involved. Pig iron isn’t made near a port – the production locations are more land inward. The iron needs to be moved by train, truck or smaller vessel to the large carrier in the port. It can be quite tricky to get all 50 000 t of pig iron from a variety of locations to the ship on time.”

The commodity was shipped from Rio de Janeiro by the Yuanping Sea bulk carrier. The vessel was loaded at the Port of Rio de Janeiro, and departed for Rotterdam on 3 October.

“Another unique feature of this shipment is that it includes different types of pig iron – all of high quality. You may not see it from the outside, but the various orders differ in terms of chemical composition. It can be quite a challenge to prevent these different categories from getting mixed up on board the vessel. There will always be hiccups in an operation of this size. For example, right now the water levels along the Rhine are too low for direct forwarding via inland shipping. That’s why we will be storing 18 000 t of iron at ZHD Stevedores’s facilities in Dordrecht. From there, we can transport these orders by truck or inland vessel to our clients: foundries and steel manufacturers in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, France and Belgium,” said Brunner.