New Lock Terneuzen fully operational from 1 August 2025
On 1 August 2025, we saw the New Lock Terneuzen becoming fully operational. The New Lock now forms a standard part of the Terneuzen North Sea lock complex.
Test voyages
Test voyages through the New Lock Terneuzen began on 8 May 2025. Seafarers (sailors, shipowners, pilots, tugboat services and operators) wanted to gain experience of operating the New Lock under controlled conditions, sailing and accompanying ships through the lock chamber and working on the embankment.
Those test voyages were conducted successfully. The seafarers gained enough experience to accompany vessels adequately and safely through the New Lock Terneuzen. So the New Lock can be declared fully operational.
From 1 August, the New Lock will form a standard part of the Terneuzen North Sea lock complex. As a result, the capacity of the North Sea lock complex will increase: it will be possible to allow vessels with a draft of 12,5 m to pass through the locks at any tide. Previously, this was possible only at high tide.
New Lock Terneuzen
The New Lock is 427 m long, 55 m wide and 16,44 m deep. It is suitable for vessels up to 366 m in length, 49 m in width and with a draft of 14,5 m. The New Lock was built within the existing lock complex in Terneuzen, in the harbour area of North Sea Port.
Access and traffic flow
The New Lock ensures better access and smoother traffic flow for shipping coming from the North Sea, and, in the other direction, from the Western Scheldt to the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal and onwards. The lock is part of the shipping route between Rotterdam and Paris and the number of vessels that uses the North Sea locks, meaning the Terneuzen lock complex is on the rise. Another noticeable change is that the vessels themselves are getting bigger.
Global increases in the scale of shipping mean that locks like the New Lock have to be as big as the new locks in the Panama Canal to handle shipping on the scale seen today.