ISSUE 2 2010
RO-RO
Stena Line launched the first of two of the world’s biggest Superferries, the Stena Hollandica, on its Harwich-Hook of Holland and Killingholme- Hook routes from May this year. She will be followed by the Stena Britannica on 9 October. The Killingholme routes will also gain two new ships, offering 30% more capacity than the old ones,
in March and October 2011. The Stena Hollandica has enormous freight capacity, says freight commercial manager Frank Nieuwenhuys. The new vessel offers 5,500 lane metres of vehicle deck space, with double-deck loading for fast embarkation and discharge. The new ships are being launched into a very choppy
Quiet times on north Atlantic
There are signs of a pick-up on the transatlantic ro ro trade, but they are still very tentative, says ACL’s general manager, John Fricker. “We’re hoping that 2011 will push us back to 2008 volumes, but it’s still quite fragile, and customers are still not committing themselves.” With the turmoil in the banking system, finance for big projects is still hard to come by and 2010 has been a fairly static year for ACL’s project business. The Grimaldi-owned operator
is still running its five con ro ships weekly on a schedule that includes Liverpool and north European ports, and Halifax, New York, Baltimore and Portsmouth in the US. ACL has meanwhile been marketing itself to windfarm constructors. These companies have in the past tended to save up all their shipments and put
everything on the specialist vessels that carry the towers and blades – which are too big even for ACL’s capacious holds – but there are advantages to shipping items like transformers as and when they are produced on ACL’s weekly service rather than allowing them to pile up at the factory. The industry has taken these arguments on board, John Fricker believes, but until projects start to happen in large numbers, it’s pretty academic. The situation on ACL’s container upper decks, which can carry around 1850teu of boxes, is a complete contrast; demand is outrunning capacity on all operators. To a limited extent, ACL can block-stow 20-ft boxes on its lower decks, which are fitted with twistlocks, but loading and unloading is time- consuming.
financial climate, however. Shipyards were very busy when the new vessels were ordered in 2006/07, but now they are hungry for orders, says Stena Line area director for the North Sea, Pim de Lange. The traffic on the North Sea has also nose-dived from a peak of 173,000 freight units in 2007 on Harwich/Hook to 138,000 last year. “We now see
slight growth – we’ve definitely seen the bottom – but in my view it will take until 2012 before we reach the 2007 level again.” The old vessels on the Harwich
Hook route will move to Stena’s Kiel-Gothenburg service, whose vessels will in turn shift to Karlskrona-Gdynia. Business on the Continent and Scandinavia has held up a lot better than in
the UK, says Pim de Lange. Car- industry-related traffic has been hit, but other business is doing relatively well. The Kil lingholme-Hook
route has fared better than the southern UK service. “We carried 78,000 units last year, which was only about 10% down,” says Pim de Lange. The North of England is still more
19 Stena launches first of two new ships
manufacturing-orientated, although competition on the Humber is more intense - though again business on the route is picking up again slightly. The Harwich-Rotterdam route
also suffered in 2008. This is mainly an unaccompanied trailer route and here, low rates are as much a problem as declining volume.
SeaFrance for sale
SeaFrance has been formally put into liquidation by the French Commercial Court and is now looking for a buyer who can restructure the debt-ridden company and put it back on a firm financial footing. The company’s owners, the French state railways (SNCF) is currently meeting SeaFrance’s losses while a rescue plan is hammered out, which could involve takeover by a rival operator.
Major job losses are on the horizon. Seafrance has put a revised plan involving the loss of 725 jobs in France to the comité d’entreprise. The fact that it has been accepted by the once militant trade unions, whereas the loss of 482 jobs in the previous plan triggered a strike over the crucial Easter period, is an indication of the seriousness of the operator’s financial plight.
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