Talk:ARA region

Translation and source notes

This text was translated and adapted from the German Wikipedia article ARA-Region, revision 264053229, dated 7 February 2026 at 08:58 UTC. References were checked and converted to English Wikipedia citation templates with {{sfn}} footnotes.

The translation uses the English names Antwerp and Ghent and the title ARA region. It describes a port and industrial region, rather than implying that ARA is an administrative region or a single port authority. The introductory claim that these are the three largest and busiest ports in Western Europe was omitted: the cited glossary describes them as among Europe's largest ports and does not establish that ranking.

Transport statistics and geography

• The container modal-share table was checked against table 2 on printed page 6 (PDF page 7) of the Federal Office for Goods Transport's December 2019 report. The 2017 figures for Rotterdam and Amsterdam and 2018 figures for Antwerp are explicitly dated. Amsterdam's published percentages are 41%, 5% and 55%, totalling 101%; they are reproduced without adjustment and the total is noted below the table. The report's adjacent prose mistakenly assigns the 55% figure to Antwerp, whereas its table assigns it to Amsterdam. The draft follows the table, as does the German article.
• The statement that rail's share was below 10% was corrected to 10% or less, since Rotterdam's figure is exactly 10%. The comparison with Hamburg and Bremerhaven now gives the report's dated figures rather than presenting them as current statistics. The malformed German reference tag <name="balm" /> was replaced with a working citation.
• The German article's separate claims of roughly 44% inland-shipping share at Rotterdam and over 30% at Antwerp were omitted. They refer to a different or unspecified cargo base from the container table, and the cited FIS page has been revised since the German article was written. The comparison of inland shipping and rail is retained with the 2019 report as its source.
• The geography was rephrased around connections to the Rhine. The draft does not place all three ports within the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. The Scheldt–Rhine Canal's role is supported by Rijkswaterstaat's description of the Amsterdam–Rotterdam–Flanders corridor.
• The unreferenced claim that deep-water approaches allow the largest container ships to enter all three ports was omitted, together with the accompanying detailed discussion of the IJgeul and Euro–Maasgeul. Port and lock restrictions are not interchangeable, and no common maximum vessel size was established.

Industry and related port groupings

• The claim that about two-thirds of Germany's imported refined petroleum products arrived through ARA is presented as a statement from the 2022 industry overview, not as a current measurement. Its citation date is 3 February 2022, as shown in the publisher's metadata; the German article gives 17 January 2022. The claim that the region contains Europe's largest storage capacities and refineries was reduced to a description of its refineries and tank farms. The separate chemical-cluster ranking is attributed to Energate's 2024 report.
• The oil-market passage retains the source's statement about Rotterdam's influence on petroleum-product prices in Germany and central Europe. It does not claim that local inventories alone determine global crude-oil prices.
• The original account of the Central Europe Pipeline System, Rotterdam Rhine Pipeline, Rhein-Main pipeline and BASF supply routes was not supported by the cited Port of Rotterdam page. It has been replaced with that page's documented account of the pipeline network and the ARG/RC2 ethylene connection between Rotterdam, Antwerp and the Ruhr. The English-language version of the port authority's page is cited.
• The Antwerp–Zeebrugge relationship is updated from cooperation to the April 2022 merger, using the port authority's announcement. The ZARA grouping predates that merger; the 2019 transport report already uses it.
• The ARAG expansion is supported by the Baltic Exchange's shipping glossary. It is not described as a result of the new Terneuzen lock: the term appears in a 1999 European Commission rice-duty regulation, well before the lock's opening. The new lock's opening on 11 October 2024 and its role in admitting larger seagoing vessels are sourced to North Sea Port.
• North Sea Port's formation in 2018 and its constituent port areas are confirmed by its own website. The source article's claim of fourth place in inland-shipping throughput was omitted because its cited CCNR chapter returned HTTP 404 and no year or ranking basis was established. North Sea Port is left as plain text because no English Wikipedia article under that title was found when preparing this draft.

The North Sea shipping-route map is retained from the German article. Its Commons description dates it to 7 October 2009 and identifies it as CC0; the caption makes the date clear.

Викидим (talk) 20:35, 19 September 2026 (UTC)