Le transport par voie d'eau : Un outil performant dans la chaîne logistique des conteneurs

When the Port of Paris decided in 1991 to study a new container line between Le Havre and Gennevilliers, the majority of operators were in doubt. The reasons for this doubt were the slowness of the fluvial transport and the constraint of just-in-time. During the study, the principal objective was to show the reliability of barge transport and to build an efficient offer. The barge service, Logiseine, was launched at the end of 1994 by a consortium made up of Port of Paris Subsidiary, Paris-Terminal, river transporter C.F.T., a Le Havre terminal box operator Terminaux de Normandie and the Port of Le Havre. In its first full year of activity, the Logiseine service handled close to 5,500 TEU. The navigation time between Le Havre and Gennevilliers is between 28 to 30 hours. One of Logiseine's main advantages is that it operates 363 days out of 365 days and the river Seine is not saturated. In 1996, about 10 000 TEU used the river service with generally two barges with a capacity between 30 and 88 TEU on two levels and four containers wide. The river Seine can accomodate 3 levels. Logiseine offers a flexible service that has already been extended. Logiseine hopes that with the new society Paris-Terminal SA which has been created in 1996 between the partners of Logiseine and the C.N.C. (Compagnie Nouvelle des Conteneurs) a subsidiary of SNCF, the Logiseine traffic will be increased and there is a new project between Limay and Le Havre and perhaps a stop in Rouen. The port of Gennevilliers is a main multimodal transport hub and Logiseine also provides truck and railway service.