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We hold weekly slots on transatlantic services calling Halifax, and we file the customs entries on both sides of the crossing. You get one contact, one bill of lading and one invoice.
Why this route
On the services that run this corridor, Bremerhaven is about nine days out of Halifax and Rotterdam about eleven. For a buyer in Bremen, Hamburg or the Ruhr, taking the box off at the German call saves two days at sea and a road leg back across the border.
The sea distance to Rotterdam is 3,854 nautical miles, which comparable services cover in about eleven days. At the far end, Rotterdam sits in front of a hinterland of roughly 500 million people, reachable by the Betuwe freight line and by Rhine barge as far as Basel.
Rail runs straight off the dock at Halifax, so inbound European cargo can be in Chicago, Detroit or St Paul within four to seven days of discharge.
What we do
Most customers start with the ocean leg and add the rest once they have seen how the paperwork goes.
Weekly space in both directions. Take a whole container if you have the volume; if you do not, you pay for the cubic metres you actually use and share the box with other shippers on the same sailing.
We classify the goods, work out whether they meet the CETA rules of origin, and file the entries in Canada and the Netherlands.
Space under customs bond at both ends. Goods sit there with duty and import tax unpaid until you release them, which matters if you are holding a season of stock.
Collection across Atlantic Canada, delivery across the Benelux and western Germany.
Reefer positions on each sailing, with the temperature log handed over as part of the file. For seafood we also raise the CFIA export certificate through TRACES NT and check that the plant is on the EU approved list before anything is booked.
Machinery and out-of-gauge units, surveyed and permitted before the lift is booked.
Tariffs
When the agreement came into force, 98 per cent of EU tariff lines went duty free for Canadian goods, and another one per cent was phased out over the seven years that followed. On industrial goods the EU opened 99.4 per cent immediately and Canada 99.6 per cent.
The rate is only available if the goods actually originate in Canada under the agreement's rules, which cap non-originating material at 50 per cent of the value and tighten that to 45 per cent in some sectors. You claim it with an origin declaration written on the invoice. Canadian law then expects you to keep the supporting records for six years.
Getting that wrong is expensive and it surfaces long after the container has been delivered. We would rather do the classification before you book.
Figures from Global Affairs Canada and the Dutch tax authority. Listed with sources on the sources page.
Next departures
| Vessel | Route | Departs | Arrives | Status |
|---|
Demonstration schedule. Vessel names are illustrative, because the ship on any given week is whichever one the carrier has deployed.
Year round
Cargo on this lane
Nova Scotia exports about $827 million of seafood a year, $449 million of it fresh lobster, and the European Union is one of its three largest seafood markets.
Lobster, crab and groundfish. The paperwork is the hard part: the processing plant has to be on the EU approved list, and every shipment needs a CFIA health certificate raised through TRACES NT plus a catch certificate from Fisheries and Oceans.
Nova Scotia ships around $219 million of chemical wood pulp and $229 million of paper products a year. Most of it consolidates well into full containers.
Frozen wild blueberries, apples and prepared fruit, moving in reefer boxes.
Live plant material needs a phytosanitary certificate and often an inspection on arrival, so we pre-lodge the documents rather than letting the box sit at the terminal waiting on paperwork.
Production equipment and spares, including units too tall or too heavy for a standard box.
Cheese, confectionery and packaged goods. Dairy is the awkward one, because it moves under tariff rate quotas instead of a flat preferential rate, so we check quota availability before quoting.
Why now
The share of Canadian exports going to the United States fell ten percentage points to 68 per cent between May 2024 and May 2025. In one month this spring, merchandise exports to everywhere else rose 24.8 per cent, the second largest monthly increase on record, while exports south fell 6.6 per cent.
Some of that is a handful of commodities rather than a broad shift, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. But the direction is real, and the Netherlands is showing up in the figures: Canadian aluminium exports rose 50.7 per cent in a single month to $1.2 billion, led by shipments to the Netherlands, Italy and Greece.
For a Nova Scotia exporter with a European buyer, the constraint has rarely been demand. It has been finding somebody who will handle both the crossing and the customs file without handing it off three times.
Trade figures from Statistics Canada and Export Development Canada, cited on the sources page.
Our Halifax office handles the Canadian side. Customs work in the Netherlands is done by our Rotterdam partner, who holds the Dutch licences.
Notices
Importers now post their own Release Prior to Payment security directly with the border agency, and the required amount is recalculated every 20 October against the previous twelve months. If yours has drifted, the time to find out is not at the terminal gate.
Volumes were up 3.1 per cent, and Rotterdam stayed ahead of Antwerp-Bruges as Europe's largest container port. Good news for anyone relying on onward connections out of it.
We have taken additional powered positions on the Halifax terminal for the lobster season.
Start here
You will get a written quotation covering the freight, the customs entries and any inland leg, usually the same working day.