Characteristics
The main characteristics are:
- Combination of waterside hubs with small inland vessels/barges
- Specific (new) design of inland barge used: Pallet Shuttle Barges (PSB)
- Automatisation of pallet routing and handling process
- Barges routing based on goods flow and groupage
- Real time process control and management
- Adapted loading/unloading systems to user requirements
The most important differences in comparison to the traditional inland navigation inland vessels are:
- Goods are carried on a deck, not in a hold
- Safe short loading/unloading process, adapted to specific requirements of users
- Smaller size of barge, resulting in lower operational costs
- State of the art propulsion and ship’s systems
- No (living) accommodation on board of the barge
- Single crew
- Transferability and multi-tasking of crew
- Industrial scale of the platform
The Blue Line Logistics concept also will give a response to the following threats of the current traditional inland navigation:
- the disappearing of small inland vessels from the supply side of the transport market by building new units on industrial scale
- the lack of intake of labour forces for inland navigation on small waterways by offering inland waterway jobs with increased attractiveness