autoevolution
 

Swedish Harbor Packed with Unsold Cars

Apparently, the land is not enough for Toyota's unsold vehicles in Sweden... Because parking lots are packed with unsold cars at the Swedish Port of Malmoe, the Japanese car maker had to rent a cargo ship to store the 2,500 unsold cars, drive.com.au reported.

“We have space for 12,500 cars in Malmo, which acts as a distribution centre for all the Nordic countries,” said Toyota spokesman Etienne Plas. “But we have run out of space. We need the ship to store cars while they are waiting to be delivered. Hopefully we won’t need it for that long.”

It seems that poor sales due to the global recession made parking lots insufficient at Malmoe, a port official explained. There are already more than 30,000 vehicles belonging to different brands that are occupying the port, with 2,500 more  crowded on the 195-meter Morning Glory. The port itself could store maximum 27,500 cars normally.

"The Swedish-Norwegian company Wallenius Wilhelmsen has reached an agreement with Toyota to let them use the Morning Glory cargo ship to store some cars, and we load and unload the cars," Bart Steijaert, in charge of car stocks at the Malmoe harbour, explained.

Although they are building a new parking lot to store more cars, the project is due to be finished in April.

"Since last summer, we've had a lot of cars in the harbour and we started to lack parking areas as the car sales dropped dramatically, and then the vessel arrived on January 7," Steijaert said.

In Sweden, car sales dropped by 31.3 percent in February when compared to the same month last year and many automakers have remained with an overload of unsold stocks.
If you liked the article, please follow us:  Google News icon Google News Youtube Instagram X (Twitter)
 

Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?

You will only receive our top stories