Newsletter: December 2021

APM Terminals Maasvlakte II moves two million Deepsea TEU within one year! We are very proud of this historic milestone of our terminal. We would like to thank our customers for the cooperation and the confidence in our terminal.

Every quarter, a customer satisfaction survey is conducted via an online survey. You can indicate to what extent you would recommend us to others on a scale of 0 to 10. In quarter 4, you gave us an average score of 7.3, the same as in quarter 3 of 2021. 

Our goal for next year is to further optimize the website, to display the truck turnaround time on the terminal in different places and to provide insight into the availability of time slots via a truck barometer. 

Your feedback is very valuable to our terminal. We greatly appreciate you taking the time and effort to participate in our customer satisfaction survey.

The yard density at the terminal has been very high for a long time. In our previous newsletter, Bob van de Hulst told you about what is involved in predicting the yard density and keeping it controllable.

The dwell time of certain container flows is still a lot higher than for example than a year ago. In the end of November, we announced that the Yard Opening Time for all vessels would be adjusted from 7 days before ETA to 6 days before ETA. Last week we analyzed the impact of this and found that this measure helps very well to reduce the dwell time of export containers. This allows us to keep the yard density controllable and the terminal operational.

Of course, we realize that this has a big impact on various supply chain partners. We would therefore like to thank you again for your cooperation.  

Thursday 9 December was dedicated to the truckdrivers. As part of Truckers' Day, EKB Container Logistik distributed goodie bags to the drivers at our truckers parking. This successful action resulted to many positive reactions from the truckdrivers.

APM Terminals Maasvlakte II is continuously working on improving the truck handling with the aim of making our truck handling faster and smoother. 

Damage reduction on trucks in the stack
Analyses showed that there was a lot of damage to the trucks, chassis, or containers in the stack. Because of this, measures have been taken to reduce the chance of damage. For example, the automatic set-down of the crane has been reduced by 20%. In addition, we handle trucks with a special chassis (lifting cylinder, crane, or other special obstacles) manually. These two adjustments were made a few months ago and we have seen a reduction of about 70%. We continue to look at what we can improve to reduce the damage cases.

NDP Check 
When a container leaves the terminal by truck, it may happen that Customs wants to do a check on the container. This is called a NDP check. 

Previously, at the Gate Out, truckdrivers could read their license plate number from a small matrix board and then they had to proceed to the NDP Check parking area. Not everyone noticed this, with the result that the truckdriver drove to the Security Out gate. There, the drivers were informed that a check had to be done and they had to drive backwards towards the NDP Check Parking Area. This caused to unsafe situations.

Now, an adjustment has been made in the software so that the truckdriver is already informed at the pedestal at the Gate Out that he/she has to drive to the NDP parking area. This notification will come before the EIR ticket is expended.