Strategic Motorway of the Sea STRATMOS  is a consortium of 27 Northern European players with lead Norwegian partner Rogaland County Council, one of 10 Norwegian organisations, Flanders contributing five players, Germany three, England and Netherlands two each and Denmark one.

Among its aims are to learn and contribute to planning, tendering and implementation of a new short sea shipping service (NORSHUKON) between Mid-Norway, Shetland and England, with links to the Continent. (This has failed to secure funding to date. ) 

It also aims at the development of concepts for offshore hubs and the MoS linkages, with Scapa Flow Container Terminal in Orkney as a specific case.

For Scotland Napier Unversity Transport Research Initiative leads four participators, Scrabster Harbour Trust, Orkney and both Aberdeen City and Grampian Council

The estimate is that at around €40m, the proposed  Floating Container Storage & Transhipment Terminal (FCSTT) would cost about €80m less to build than a conventional land-based port offering similar capacity.

The hub, a large storage vessel fitted with cranes, could nearly double the current £16bn value of Scotland’s exports of manufactured goods. Spin-off jobs would also be created for Scotland as the hub’s host nation.

Maritime business expert, Professor Alf Baird, led Napier's involvement in the EU-funded project in collaboration with German crane manufacturer, Gottwald Port Technology.

“The hub could handle goods for perhaps over 20 countries in Europe, including the UK, which would then be transhipped via the new terminal," he said. “Scotland, as host nation, would be able to develop advanced logistics capabilities and spin-offs from the hub so that substantial extra income could be generated through storage, labelling, sorting, distribution and selling of goods.

“Most of Europe’s seafood, for example, is produced nearby in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Russia and Greenland – this traffic could be consolidated in Scotland into refrigerated containers for distribution worldwide via the container hub.

“Indigenous exports such as whisky would also expect to become more competitive. The facility’s low-cost global transport connections in particular would help attract inward investment to Scotland.”

"The hub could also be the “ultimate green port” due to its proximity to Orkney’s burgeoning marine renewable energy sector," said Professor Baird. “It would have virtually zero impact on the landside, lead to major reductions in deep-sea and feeder ship CO2 emissions due to shorter sailing distances, and make use of renewable energy to power the container cranes.”

The Scottish Government has identified the economic importance of developing a container transhipment terminal at Scapa Flow, whose location at the crossroads between the North Sea and Atlantic ocean is seen as ideal for the venture.

“This is a low cost solution which helps make the terminal easier to develop,” said Professor Baird, who has already had interest from Latin America, the USA and Norway in the TRI proposal. “It is a design concept that could be employed in many other parts of the world, an alternative to high-cost concrete terminals, minimising environmental impacts in sensitive coastal areas,” he added.

The partners behind the project will now bid for further EU funding, as well as Scottish Government support, to help develop the full-scale demo terminal in tandem with interested maritime companies.