About Us

Port Rouen ©P-Boulen

Coastlink is an association of companies committed to expanding the role shortsea shipping plays in transporting containers around Europe. Members include deepsea and shortsea shipping companies, intermodal operators, shipbrokers, ports and stevedores, forwarding and logistics specialists and shippers.

Coastlink was established in London in 2004 under the Chairmanship of David Cheslin, Managing Director of Dunelm Public Relations Ltd. Gavin Roser of Pantrak Transportation is the Deputy Chairman.

Coastlink’s origins lie with a meeting in December 2003, initiated by Cheslin and Roser. This set out to explore the viability of a coastal container service along the UK East Coast that would cater for both deepsea feeder boxes and the carriage of UK domestic traffic. While it was felt that the viability of moving domestic cargo by containers was still some way off, the meeting did conclude that regular meetings to discuss shortsea matters would be worthwhile, especially given the looming spectre of port congestion during the 2004 peak season.

Coastlink organised a major conference in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in May 2004 and repeated the event in June 2005. This has settled down into a pattern of two major conferences each year. In 2009, these were in Tallinn and Dunkerque; in 2010 they were to be in Bilbao and Antwerp but sadly Bilbao had to be dropped.  In addition, smaller meetings are held to discuss specific subjects of current interest.

Since its inception, Coastlink has broadened its scope from a purely UK association to include subjects of interest to those involved in shortsea shipping throughout Northern Europe. The resultant networking opportunities, most notably between ports and shortsea/feeder shipping companies, have already led to a number of new service initiatives while Coastlink is also working actively to identify and eliminate where possible those factors that restrict shortsea shipping’s ability to compete with road transport. 2009 saw Coastlink's field of interest expand to cover the Mediterranean and North Africa.