Baltic States – CIS, EU – Baltic States, Lithuania, Port, Transport

“Tomorrow (11.02) we hope to take up to 50 trucks. Those queues have actually gotten shorter as many trucks have been allowed to enter the terminal. We’re trying to deal with this issue by interchanging the vessels currently used on routes to Sweden and Germany. We’ll see whether it could be possible to do that by the end of this week. That vessel would be travelling at a higher speed. Hence we’d automatically be able to provide one additional sailing. We’d be providing seven sailings per week, instead of six,” Vaidas Klumbys, spokesman for DFDS Seaways, told BNS.

The company hoped that the ferries would be interchanged as early as this weekend, he said, adding that this was not yet certain.

Around 270 trucks are currently queuing at the terminal and inside the terminal, down from approximately 300 trucks on Tuesday.

According to Klumbys, the smaller ferry, which is currently sailing between Klaipeda and Kiel, Germany, is able to accommodate approximately 120 trucks whereas the larger ferry, which is now sailing between Klaipeda and Karlshamn, Sweden, can accommodate about 150 trucks.

Truck congestion at the ferry terminal began after haulage agreements between Russia and Poland expired on Feb. 1 and a new deal was not reached, prompting Russian trucks to bypass Poland on their way to Germany.

Truck queues have also built up at checkpoints on Lithuania’s border with Belarus.