Trasmediterránea Concentrates Canary Islands Traffic in Cádiz

Trasmediterránea has decided to concentrate all cargo traffic on the Canary Islands route at the port of Cádiz. This is a wise decision that will improve turnaround times and increase from two to three weekly ships, thereby enhancing its presence in the Cádiz port. Starting today, June 14, Trasmediterránea has three vessels, “José María Entrecanales,” “Albayzin,” and “Volcán de Teneguía,” which will set sail tomorrow on its first direct trip to Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

This ship, leased from Caflaja, S.L. – one of the companies of Naviera Armas – has a cargo capacity of 355 TEUs and 55 semi-trailers. It will depart from Cádiz every Tuesday at 7 PM, with its first stop at the Tenerife port, arriving at 8 PM. On Friday, it will be in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and that same day, at 8 PM, it will return to Santa Cruz de Tenerife before continuing to Cádiz, where it will arrive on Monday at 8 AM.

Until now, Trasmediterránea operated with two other ships on the Cádiz-Canary Islands route. The roll-on/roll-off ship “José María Entrecanales,” with a capacity of 3,500 linear meters, departs from Cádiz every Saturday at 3 PM and arrives in Santa Cruz de Tenerife early Monday morning, then continues to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria at 9:30 AM the same day. On Wednesdays, it is in Santa Cruz de La Palma at 8 AM and returns to Cádiz, arriving every Friday at 5 PM.

With this reorganization of the service, Trasmediterránea offers a transportation solution to shippers who, due to the perishable nature of their products, require the shortest possible turnaround. This way, fresh products, groupages, and others allow Canary Island consumers to find goods on store shelves by Monday. At the same time, Trasmediterránea enables bananas from La Palma, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria to be positioned on the mainland by Friday to be available in the market over the weekend.

The ship “Albayzin” provides a complementary weekend service to that offered by the ship “José María Entrecanales” and, in turn, allows bananas to be positioned on the shelves of mainland stores by Monday. It has a capacity for 120 semi-trailers, 172 vehicles, and nearly six hundred passengers – of which 400 are in cabins – and connects the mainland and the Canary Islands weekly. It departs every Tuesday at 5 PM from the Cádiz port and arrives in Arrecife at 11 PM on Wednesday; in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on Thursday at 8 AM, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on Thursday at 5 PM, and in Santa Cruz de La Palma on Friday at 8 AM. That same day, it returns to Santa Cruz de Tenerife and after a stop in Las Palmas early Saturday, departs at 2 PM for Puerto del Rosario and Lanzarote, arriving at midnight. It reaches Cádiz at noon on Monday.

The ship “Albayzin” is the only one that makes stops at five islands. It also enables positioning every Thursday of cargo in the Canary Islands, generated on Monday and Tuesday on the mainland, so that the Canary customer has the goods ready on the shelves of their stores by the weekend, starting that same Friday.

As expected, the Port Authority of the Bay of Cádiz celebrates the incorporation of this ship to the line with the Canary Islands and highlights the effort made by all port services (piloting, towing, mooring, and loading and unloading) to contribute to the competitiveness of the service.

Until now, the ship “Volcán de Teneguía” operated at the port of Seville, but we assume that after calculating the numbers – six hours of ascent and another six of descent on the Guadalquivir River, piloting, delays due to tide loss, tariffs, etc. – and with barely a hundred kilometers of distance from the port of Cádiz, it seems a wise decision to save costs and concentrate Canary Islands traffic in a single port.

Photo: provided