Port secures transatlantic service.

• Position: Brief article

The Thunder Bay Port Authority has an arrangement with a Dutch partner, the Spliethoff Group of Amsterdam, to offer monthly transatlantic marine service to Europe in 2015.

Shippers in northwestern Ontario and Western Canada can now arrange to send partial shiploads of cargo, and even containers, to customers in Europe through the western Lake Superior port.

"Through the years, a lot of people were asking us about smaller lots - as low as 200 tonnes - to go to Europe and basically you couldn't do it," said port authority CEO Tim Heney. "You would have to charter a whole vessel."

Starting next spring, Spliethoff will be introducing a 10,000-tonne capacity vessel into service that can handle shipper-owned containers, pallet-wide supplied containers, rolling...