New barge for transport

In September 2016, Tessenderlo Group commissioned a new barge, which transports ferric chloride to Paris from the French production site in Loos. Located in the suburbs of Lille, the site currently delivers coagulants to major urban areas such as Amsterdam, Brussels, and Geneva. The new barge is named after the local folklore character Margot la Fileuse. The first voyage of Margot la Fileuse was scheduled for mid-September with a departure from Loos to Paris.

The geographical location of our production site in Loos offers our business unit the possibility of transporting ferric chloride by river to Paris. The French capital uses this product to purify its wastewater. In this way, we can meet the wishes and needs of our customers while making part of our logistics more sustainable. The barge mainly allows us to reduce the traffic flow on the roads of Northern France, saving fuel and reducing CO₂ emissions. As we are geographically located close to our customers in large urban areas, we can limit our environmental footprint in logistics. Our new barge is perfectly suited for transport on French waterways, with a loading capacity of 750 tons per trip, the equivalent of about 30 truckloads. Thanks to this barge, we can limit our transport on the roads of Northern France by about 2,500 truck trips per year, equivalent to 650,000 km per year. This decision will benefit both the environment of our fellow citizens and the safety of the roads they use." (Stéphane Leclef, former BU Director)

The double-hulled barge was designed by the inland shipping company Wijnhoff & van Gulpen & Larsen BV (Wijgula), at our request. The barge was custom-built to fit the small dimensions of the French waterways. The commissioning of the new ferric chloride barge represents a further step for the business unit, which is also currently investing in a new electrolysis unit in Loos. This 50 million EUR investment gives the Loos facility a solid foundation for the future as Europe's largest ferric chloride coagulant production facility.