The Netherlands – Duisburg and Rotterdam’s port authorities have signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) to renew and expand their cooperation agreements.
The cooperation will be expanded to include initiatives in the areas of digitization and the energy transition, in addition to existing agreements relating to the optimization of logistical connections. Markus Bangen, CEO of duisport, and Allard Castelein, CEO of the Port of Rotterdam, signed the agreement.
For a long time, duisport and the Port of Rotterdam have been trading partners. More than one million TEU of containers are exchanged between the two logistics hubs each year, for example. Almost a third are already being transported by rail. Digitization and data sharing have the potential to expand the role of this environmentally friendly mode of transportation. This letter of intent aims to link Duisburg’s ‘Rail Freight Data Hub’ initiative with Rotterdam’s ‘Rail Connected’ to create the world’s most digital and sustainable port-inland hub connection.
Hubs for hydrogen
The letter of intent also includes commitments to investigate the possibility of linking the Portbase (Rotterdam) and RheinPorts Information System (Duisburg) port community systems, as well as to learn from each other’s digital twin project initiatives. In terms of the energy transition, both ports intend to look into collaborating on the development of hydrogen hubs. Rotterdam as Europe’s future “hydrogen gateway,” and Duisport as Germany’s hub. As a result, establishing a physical link between the two is a no-brainer.
