We have had regular shipments of packaging materials from Uddevalla to Philadelphia, US, during the last few months. Reception of cargo for the next shipment have now begun to arrive at the port and the loading is expected to take place at the end of June.

These shipments are a collaboration between us, the Logistics company FH Bertling and the Chartering agent Donnermalm Shipping AB. The vessels that are used are side-ported vessels in the Shipping company Spliethoff's series S-class, which run in a regular route between Europe and North America.

We received our new blue 85 ton Reachstacker from NC. Nielsen in the beginning of June, just in time to handle this summer's project shipments. The Reachstacker will primarily be used at Sörvik and The Skeppsholmspier when handling heavy cargo, as flexible complement to our other Reachstackers of 45, 45 and 100 tons. Our new addition also means a significantly higher capacity in heavy lifting, as the two largest Reachstackers now can lift as much as 170 tons in a tandem-lift. Together, these machines will contribute to an increased availability in our terminal and better service to our customers.

With a lifting capacity of 85 tons, the specially developed NCN 85 T-Reachstacker is ready to perform heavy lifting. The machine is a rebuilt Konecranes with an unladen weight of 69.7 tons. It measures 11.1 meters in length, 4.1 meters in width and 4.6 meters in height. The Reachstacker is delivered with a weightlifting hook, reinforced with a stronger boom, has increased counterweight and larger lifting cylinders, among other things.

Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of loading about 2000 tons of granite from Port of Uddevalla. The stone, which is carved from the rocks of Bohuslän, arrives to us in large blocks weighing as much as 20 tons each.

The granite blocks are shipped from us to Portugal, where the stone will be processed to become curbs and paving stones. This is the first shipment out of several, from now on we estimate to handle up to ten shipments a year.

Bohusläns granite has a long history of use and can be found in the streets of many major cities in the world. It is a pleasure to handle this cargo in Uddevalla and help carry on this fine tradition.

Our Planning Assistants are responsible for continuously planning our personnel- and machine resources, for both our port and terminal operations. The Planning Assistants are the first contact for our Stevedores when they start working here, and usually the first person all of them meet every morning. They assemble gangs of our personnel to discharge or load cargo from and to vessels and adds resources for reception of cargo arriving by train or truck, for example. The Planning Assistants always makes sure that the right resource are in the right place, at the right time.

The position as Planning Assistant has until now been shared  between two of our collective employees, Håkan Karlsson and Leif Jansson. However, as they are both retiring within a short period, the position is now being converted into a civil servant employment and will instead be referred to as Resource Planner.

Leif will retire already this summer. While Håkan will remain with us until the end of the year to train our newly recruited Resource Planner. We would like to thank Leif and Håkan for their time with us and we wish them both a wonderful retirement!

As we approach this years summer holiday season, I look back at the first six months off 2021. I can state that our every day struggles are showing results and making a difference. Both for us and for our customers. The port has shown a slightly weaker result during the first part of the year. This is partly connected to the pandemic, and partly to the large investments we recently have made.

It does however look more promising if i zoom out and have look at the whole year. We have hired a total of eleven summer employees, to our stevedore- and forwarding departments, as a result of this summer's flow of goods. They will be strengthening our business when our regular personnel are enjoying some well-deserved time off. I urge our summer employees to follow when our more experienced staff take the lead, together you will make our customers feel safe in the dynamic port environment.

Everyone's strong commitment makes us proud and we are happy with the continued success we have in the project cargo segment. We will handle an extremely large amount of project goods in our port during the current summer. In addition to the summer employees we have also added further strength to our crane- and machinery fleet, to be able to offer full flexibility to the market.

When the pandemic has ravaged the world and the surrounding areas, we fortunately have managed to stay rather safe. The vaccination has now made it possible for our retired stevedoring workers, who usually work extra with us, to come back to work again. It is a dear reunion!

I would like to thank all of you for your fine efforts during the past six months, and for allowing us to be your reliable logistics supplier during this time. Together we are building - A Safe Haven, for the rest of 2021 and for the future.

Summer Greetings

Ulf Stenberg, CEO