Military equipment shipped from the Port of Esbjerg

For once, the Port of Esbjerg's East Port was not full of turbine blades or foundations, but armoured personnel carriers, lorries, 4WD vehicles and containers full of military equipment instead. In mid-October 2015, Denmark’s contribution to a large-scale NATO training exercise was shipped from the Port of Esbjerg.

In October and November, more than 35,000 troops from 30 countries gathered in Spain, Portugal and Italy for the biggest NATO exercise in more than ten years. The exercise was part of NATO’s ‘assurance measures’ and intended to help NATO member and partner countries train their ability to work together.

6,300 tonnes of equipment

Denmark sent 930 troops plus a Hercules aircraft, a frigate, 80 armoured full-track vehicles, 225 lorries and four-wheel drive vehicles, and 82 containers of other equipment. Overall, the Danish army shipped about 6,300 tonnes of equipment from the Port of Esbjerg.

Captain Lasse Grønlund Kampmann of the Danish Defence’s Joint Movement and Transportation Organization helped to organise the shipments. Transporting so much military hardware from Denmark to Spain and timing the arrival to match NATO’s timetable was like laying a giant jigzaw puzzle, he explains:

“It takes a lot of coordination when so many countries come together for an exercise. We did not have a say in when we would arrive in Spain or which port we would sail to: NATO directed all of that. We had a time slot to unload our equipment at Sagunto Port about 20 km north of Valencia, and that was what we based our planning on.”

The Danish Defence Command arranged the transport together with Damco, its regular partner when it comes to logistics services, and the Port of Esbjerg was selected as the port of embarkation. The Danish Home Guard assisted in the operation, checking access roads and guarding the equipment at the Østhavn area.

Costs and length of voyage determined the choice of port

The equipment was transported to Esbjerg from Defence Command units all over the country. The armoured personnel carriers and other heavy-duty equipment were transported on flat-bed trucks; lorries and four-wheel-drive vehicles were driven to Esbjerg.

The Port of Esbjerg was selected as the port of embarkation for several reasons, explains Captain Kampmann. For one thing, there would have to be sufficient space for all the vehicles and containers, and the trip to Sagunto was to be as short as possible.

“Cost was a huge issue for us. The cost of leasing the ships and the fuel costs meant that embarking from Esbjerg was the best and most economical choice. While a lot of the equipment we needed was based at units much closer to other Danish ports such as Aalborg, Aarhus or Kalundborg, it would have required longer sailing times and more money to ship it from there. Since Spain was our destination, Esbjerg was a good location," he explains and continues:

“At the same time, it was easier for us to ship from a single port. At Esbjerg, we had enough room to line up all the vehicles before loading them onto the ships. That helped us minimise the time the ships had to be in port, and that saved us some money.”

Excellent collaboration

Embarkation took four days using the two RoRo vessels Britannia Seaways, owned by DFDS, and Baltica, owned by TransProCon. Britannia Seaways sailed first and stopped at the Dutch port of Eemshaven to load additional military equipment, which allowed several NATO countries to share in the shipping costs.

Captain Kampmann watched both ships being loaded on the 1.2-kilometre-long quay of the East Port area of the port.

“The East Port area was an excellent choice for the purpose. It’s an undisturbed location: there was plenty of room, and it provided well-consolidated road for our vehicles. The Port of Esbjerg provided excellent service in giving us access to the Østhavn so we didn’t have to drive all the way through the other port areas and get in the way of the other traffic.”

When the exercise ended in mid-November, the Danish forces and the 6,300 tonnes of equipment headed home – also by way of the Port of Esbjerg.

This is a translation of the Danish article published in Port of Esbjerg Magazine 1, 2015.