The Trasmediterránea cargo ship that connects the Peninsula with Lanzarote every week and brings supplies to the markets will arrive from next February 9 every Sunday at 23:30 hours, direct from Cádiz, about 30 hours after the fresh products destined for Arrecife have been loaded in the port of Cádiz. In this way, the goods can be put on sale in the shops every Monday first thing in the morning.
This is what the director of Trasmediterránea in the Canary Islands, Martín Martín Paredes, announced this Wednesday at a press conference, a year after the company tried to delay the usual arrival of the cargo ship from Wednesdays to Fridays, a day that made it impossible to distribute goods until Monday, with which the fresh products arrived at the market with worse quality. Finally, the company docked in Los Mármoles on Thursday night, despite continuous requests from institutions and businessmen to do so on Sundays, a request that, according to Martín Paredes, has not been possible until now "due to resource problems".
Despite the interest shown by the Cabildo and the Chamber of Commerce to achieve the arrival of the ship every Sunday, Martín Paredes explained that it is not an agreement and that it is simply "an improvement in the service" they were giving and hopes that the new schedule will be profitable for the company. "If it goes well we will increase and if nobody embarks we will have to leave, this is a business," he said.
The shipping company executive also considered that now the importers of Lanzarote are not going to be at a disadvantage with respect to those of the capital islands because the ship Superfast Canarias or Supefast Andalucía -twin ships- will dock in Lanzarote directly from Cádiz and will later travel to Tenerife and Gran Canaria.
And precisely about the competitiveness of importers in Lanzarote, the spokesman of the Chamber of Commerce, Cándido Armas, who appeared together with Martín Martín Paredes, has spoken. In addition to expressing his satisfaction with the news, Armas declared that this improvement in transport "will have an impact on the prices" of the very expensive Lanzarote shopping basket, although he made it clear that this, "is only one of the conditions of the price of the products" and we must continue working on reducing the rest because he assured that businessmen are "the first to seek to be more competitive".
For the moment and despite the fact that the Cabildo has requested it from the Ministry of Development, the direct route between the Peninsula and Lanzarote is not mandatory and therefore is not subsidized, so it remains at the mercy of shipping companies.
The Superfast Canarias or the Andalucía has capacity for 3,000 meters in line of load, that is, the equivalent of 211 trailers of 14 meters, of which according to Martín Paredes 60% are refrigerated semi-trailers loaded with fresh products. "At present about 450 to 600 meters in line of average load are being moved, now with this ship it will be 3,000", the Trasmediterránea executive wanted to highlight.
This ship, together with the mixed ship Fortuny with capacity for 700 passengers and cargo for 1,500 meters, which normally goes to Gran Canaria, will be the two weekly connections with the Peninsula that the island will have. The Fortuny currently arrives at Los Mármoles every Monday at 12:00 hours and leaves at 14:00 hours.
