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Innovative Inland Navigation project to stimulate the use of small inland waterways in North-West Europe

Stimulating and improving the use of small waterways in North-West Europe. This is the aim of the new launched project Inlanav, an intiative of Waterwegen en Zeekanaal together with some other partners from the Netherlands, France and Belgium. In essence, the project will be looking at the  use of new technologies and  logistic concepts in view of creating economies of scale, maknig inland waterway transport cost-effective and performant. The project gets a 50% EU support (nearly 500.000 EUR) provided by the Interreg IVB North West Europe Programme.
Work towards these objectives will be effected through three “work packages” within INLANAV:

1. Demonstrating that coupled ships can also service new market segments, namely pallets and big bags. By coupling inland ships and equipping them with a small crane so that they can load and unload their cargo without assistance.
This doubles the freight capacity and reduces the transhipment costs.

2. The development of “next generation” Waterslag concepts with an emphasis on technological innovations, the use of new materials and new logistics concepts. To this end, a platform is provided for bringing together diverse innovative projects that focus on coupled barges.  These projects range from push barges powered by electric engines to the realization of an automatically guided barge with a larger hold, possibly constructed from composite materials.

3. The harmonisation of crewing regulations to facilitate the international operation of coupled ships. Inland waterway entrepreneurs are increasing active internationally but at present there are still differences in these regulations. The harmonising of these regulations will benefit the international goods transport with coupled ships.

4. The project is running until juin 2012. More information can be found on: www.inlanav.eu

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