Next European Shortsea Conference in Lübeck in 2018

2018 ShortSeaShipping Days to have Stronger International Focus

Bonn/Lübeck/Valetta, Date – The ShortSeaShipping Days will gain further in importance when the event is held for the third time next year.

The well-established ShortSeaShipping Days will then be held jointly with the European Shortsea Network’s annual conference for the first time. The organizer, the German ShortSeaShipping Inland Waterway Promotion Center (spc), is expecting around 500 participants to gather at the shortsea shipping industry meeting on June 20 and 21 in Lübeck, Germany. The Lübeck Chamber of Commerce and Industry is once again co-organizer of the event. Along with the conference, there will be around 40 companies from the shortsea shipping industry taking part in a trade show in the Lübeck Music and Congress Center.

The previous ShortSeaShipping Days held in 2014 and 2016 already provided many new impulses for development in shortsea transport. That ESN is holding its annual conference “Shortsea 2018” in conjunction with this event underlines the European dimension of the topic. ESN is a cooperative network of European shortsea promotion centers, including spc. “In securing this branch event we have managed to put a focus on internationalization, in this way targeting the needs of cross-border shortsea trade more strongly,” spc CEO Knut Sander explains. The annual ESN Shortsea Conference has previously been held in Paris, Lisbon, Copenhagen, and Barcelona.

The Lübeck Chamber of Commerce and Industry is again co-organizing the event, thus showing its support for the shortsea transport industry and its concerns. IHK managing director Lars Schöning says, “We want to provide the branchanother outstanding highlight with the third ShortSeaShipping Days next year, building on the success of the last two ShortSeaShipping Days in Lübeck.” He adds, “The conference’s even stronger international orientation corresponds to the direction the industry is taking and will thus make the conference even more attractive.”

The ShortSeaShipping Days provide an ideal framework to showcase the successful European networking for the national shortsea promotion centers within the ESN and for the industry. “The goal of the conference is to emphasize the importance of shortsea transportation for the development of European economic markets,” as Godwin Xerri, current president of ESN and head of the Maltese SPC, stresses. “We want to make everyone active in the supply chains to be thinking of shortsea shipping as an alternative.” ESN is also a channel for the exchange of information and contacts with DG Move, the body responsible for transportation in the European Commission. In this way, the association also remains close to topics of European transportation policy that are important to the maritime branch.

Topics of current interest in shortsea shipping will be on the agenda at the conference in Lübeck. These will include issues of sustainability, economic efficiency, logistics, development of European markets, and the effects of political regulation. An additional focus will be on developments and innovation in regard to automatization and digitization.

The conference and the accompanying trade fair are aimed at representatives from the entire transport chain such as consignors, forwarders, shipping lines, ports, and terminals. Registration is now open at the event’s website www.shortseashipping-days2018.de. You will also find regularly updated information about the conference there.

Source: ESN Special Newsletter