8


NEWS Southampton link for Liverpool


X-Press Container Line is to include Liverpool in its UK/Ireland network as part of its existing SIX service. Sailings operate every Tuesday from Southampton, arriving in Liverpool on Thursday and then continue to Greenock on Fridays Saturdays.


and Belfast on


X-Press Container Line’s UK and Ireland trade manager, Paul-James Sawyer, described the inclusion of Liverpool as “an exciting development which will help ensure that reliable and viable solutions can be offered to all of our customers servicing the North and Northwest areas. Furthermore this expansion continues to prove our commitment to the West Coast UK and Ireland trade lanes.” The new service will carry cargo on behalf of a number of deep- sea lines at Southampton. Peel Ports Mersey head of business development Stephen Carr said:


“We know there is significant demand for additional services into Northern Britain via Liverpool, as water competes with road and rail on both cost and carbon measures. We then create


additional benefits for


supply chains through a wide range of value added services at the port including rapid truck turn-around time, flexible storage solutions and inland terminals


connected by Manchester Ship Canal brands Patak’s the barge


service.” AB World Foods, whose include


and


Blue Dragon, has switched to using Liverpool as its UK import gateway


for foodstuffs and


raw materials from the Far East and India, which it says will eliminate 300,000 UK road miles and remove over 2,000 tones of CO2 a year, compared with using ports on the south coast and then trucking to final destination.


Another user for Peel barge service


Peel Ports has added a second user to its Manchester Ship Canal barge service from the port of Liverpool to Irlam. Food firm Princes has joined Kingsland Wines on a trial basis, moving around 60 boxes a week on the weekly service. Princes’ logistics director Frank Murphy said that initial results looked very promising. “It knocks about 50% off the road mileage


to our DC in Cheshire.” He added that if the experiment was found to be successful, Princes might consider setting up its own terminal on the canal rather than using the Kingsland facility as at present. Port Warrington, a little further west than Irlam, has been suggested.


He added that he would like to see more direct deepsea services into Liverpool and an


increase in the frequency of the barge operation to twice- weekly.


• Peel Ports Mersey and Quality Freight Group have reopened the rail head at Ellesmere Port, disused for 20 years.


The first train to use the new facility brought a load of sand from Sibelco of King’s Lynn destined for Quinn Glass of


Felixstowe roars again


Felixstowe has reversed the trend for deepsea shipping lines to omit the UK from their schedules with the decision by MSC to include the port in its ‘Lion’ service between Europe and Asia. Felixstowe says the new service provides one of the fastest eastbound connections for UK exporters – after a call at Gioia Tauro the


service heads direct to Singapore and then Chiwan, Hong Kong and Yantian. Calls commenced with the 9,200teu MSC Bruxelles, but from July MSC’s largest 14,000 teu vessels will operate the service. Chief executive officer of Hutchison Ports UK, David Gledhill, described the inclusion of the Port of Felixstowe as


“a great vote of confidence”. Felixstowe was the only UK port able to accommodate the next generation of container ships. He added: “With our new berths in their final phases of testing, and due to come online later this year, we will have additional capacity for these ultra-large ships.”


CC clears Stena’s DFDS route purchase


The Competition Commission (CC) has provisionally cleared Stena’s acquisition of two DFDS Irish Sea ferry services. In its provisional report published on 25 May, it concluded that the acquisition had not resulted in


a substantial lessening of


competition on routes between the North-West of England and Northern Ireland or for Irish Sea ferry services in general.


Stena bought DFDS’s vessels and Liverpool/Belfast and Heysham/ Belfast routes in December 2010, while at the same time closing its own service between Fleetwood and Larne.


CC deputy chairman and chairman of the Stena/DFDS inquiry group, Dr Peter Davis, said: “Stena’s withdrawal from that route was probably inevitable, irrespective of the acquisition.”


He added that central to the


CC’s considerations was whether Stena’s decision to close the Fleetwood–Larne route, thus reducing the number of routes on the ‘diagonal corridor’ btween North-west England and Northern Ireland was a direct


result of


the acquisition of the two other services from DFDS. The CC found that the age of the ships running the route and the specific features


of Fleetwood port, which would require any replacements to be purpose built, meant that Stena would soon have closed the route in any event.


The CC will produce its full provisional findings report shortly and is due publish its final report by 25 July. The


Irish Competition


Authority has also cleared the merger.


Elton, Cheshire, the first of a regular twice-weekly service. Manchester Ship Canal general manager Dean Hammond said: “The rail head creates


a truly multi-modal facility at Ellesmere Port”, while Quality Freight Group managing director Sebastian Gardiner, said that talks were already under way with more potential users, including trial car shipments.


ISSUE 3 2011


ROUND-UP: AIRFREIGHT


British Airways and Iberia say their two cargo operations will be run as a single business unit reporting into International Airlines Group (IAG), the holding company created by the merger of the two carriers. However, both cargo operations will retain their current brands and,apart from a small cargo management team within IAG, all other cargo employees will continue to work for their current airline.


Aeroflot Russian Airlines is actively considering options for upgrading its freighter fleet and has meanwhile joined the cargo side of multinational airline alliance, SkyTeam, having been a passenger business member since 2006. During a recent press conference to announce the latter move, Aeroflot representative Oleg Korolev stressed that no decisions had yet been made but added that “with Aeroflot due to start B777 operations next year, we are focussing more and more on the possibility of B777Fs”.


Former Air France executives Marc Boudier and Charles Foucault have been indicted by a Chicago grand jury on a US Department of Justice charge that they conspired to fix airfreight surcharges. The DoJ alleged that they participated in a conspiracy between 2004 and 2006. The maximum penalty is 10 years in prison and a $1m fine. Charges are pending against 17 other people indicted on similar charges.


ANA Aviation has been awarded the UK & Ireland cargo GSA for Gabon Airlines. The carrier operates twice weekly MD11 freighter flights from Ostend and Liege to its Libreville hub from where it operates a regional freighter network to Port Gentil, Pointe Noire and Douala.


Leisure Cargo has signed a three-year contract with Worldwide Flight Services for cargo handling in the UK and Ireland. Leisure represents airlines at 23 airports in the UK and Ireland, including Thomson Airlines, Air Berlin, Air Europa, Condor, Pegasus, Jetairfly, Nasair, Tuifly and Nordic.


Oliver Evans, chief cargo officer of Swiss International Airlines has been elected as vice chairman of TIACA. He is joined on the TIACA board by Neel Shah, senior vice president and chief cargo officer, Delta Air Lines, Vladimir Zubkov vice-president of the Volga-Dnepr Group and Jason Foote, VP international air & charter operations at UPS Airlines.


Swiss-based forwarder Panalpina is claiming one of the world’s biggest networks of temperature controlled stations under the Qualified Envirotainer Provider (QEP) programme, after it gained accreditation of 20 further locations, bringing the total to 43.


The European Commission has lifted its ban on four Indonesian all cargo air carriers – Cardig Air, Republic Express, Asia Link and Air Maleo, following a favourable report by its Air Safety Committee. Restrictions on Ukraine’s UMAir have also been removed after evidence of improved performance. However, the Committee at the same time imposed operating restrictions on all air carriers certified in Mozambique and also imposed restrictions on the two Boeing 767s operated by Air Madagascar. The Committee also urged the Commission to intensify its dialogue on aviation safety matters with the Russian Federation to ensure that all aircraft flying into the EU complied with international standards.


Austrian Airlines is to fly from Vienna to Baghdad after an absence of 21 years from 8 June with a three times a week A320 flight. The carrier already serves Erbil six times a week.


American Airlines has started its summer daily service from Dublin to Chicago. The flight will operate using wide body B767/300 aircraft. From Chicago, connections are available to most major cities in North, South and Central America including many same day connections to key destinations. The last wide-body aircraft on the route will be on 16 November, after which it reverts to B757 narrow-body aircraft for winter.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36