Antwerp also occupies a leading position for sending project cargo and heavy lifts all over the world. Specialised companies based in Antwerp offer customised services, offering market rates for specific operations such as heavy lifts and project cargo. They take care of special transport from A to Z, “from factory to foundation,” including all the necessary permits and ensuring compliance with all the safety regulations.
Antwerp is the world’s largest port of unloading for fruit, offering customers high-quality handling and storage facilities for all reefer goods. In fact, all the big reefer operators call at Antwerp as one of the most important centres of the international fruit trade. Here they import bananas in particular, but also citrus fruit, apples, pears and pineapples. These goods are unloaded with specialised cranes and stored in temperature-controlled warehouses. One of the most important fruit terminals offers its customers a unique, high-tech refrigerated warehouse where 10,000 pallets can be stored and handled fully automatically. This is actually the first fully-automated refrigerated warehouse in a fruit port.
A large number of highly competent ship’s agents ensure a constant stream of fruit from Latin America, South and West Africa and New Zealand. With an annual volume of 1.3 million tonnes of fruit, Antwerp is by far and away the market leader in the EU.
The port of Antwerp also has an excellent reputation among shipping companies that carry all sorts of forest products: cellulose, paper, cardboard, sawn lumber, plywood, hardboard etc. More than 5 million tonnes of forest products annually are handled by specialised terminal operators who constantly invest in extended storage facilities and new equipment. There are rail tracks running through the warehouses, enabling the goods to be loaded and unloaded safe and dry whatever the weather conditions. The paper manufacturers who import their raw materials via Antwerp also export the finished products through the port, taking advantage of the wide range of competitive liner services and logistics activities such as packing, labelling, assembly, distribution, quality control etc.
