22 see volumes


Issue 7 2013 Freight Business Journal


///IRELAND Cork expects green light this time


Traffic through the port of Cork was up 6.5% in the first eight months of the year aſter modest 2% growth in 2012. Commercial manager Michael


McCarthy says the port’s long- established Tivoli container terminal, close to the city, is running level with last year but will


accelerate


following CMA CGM’s introduction in August of a weekly service from Le Havre via Liverpool and Dublin. The 800teu vessel connects in


Le Havre with deepsea services from Asia. Boxes for the southern Irish market, previously trucked down from Dublin, can now be offloaded closer to destination. But the service also performs a


vital repositioning function,


McCarthy says. “Liverpool has lots of empties and it helps address our imbalance. Eucon, BG and Samskip are all doing the same and we incentivise the lines to do this.” Volumes on Maersk’s weekly


transatlantic container service, which


links central America


with north-west Europe and has been calling at Cork’s deepwater Ringaskiddy facility since last year, are also “increasing all the time,” McCarthy says. “We’ve increased our


productivity by way of a new mobile harbour crane which means we can handle 50% more containers,” he explains. “Initially we were importing 70 boxes of Fyffes fruit from Central America and exporting up to 30 boxes of Maersk exports. We have been steadily increasing on the export side and the import-export split is now around 70-130, depending on the time allocated in port. Cork is the first port on the European inward leg and the slot time can be determined by the weather conditions in the Atlantic. “We are the only Irish port


that can handle these fully laden 3,000teu vessels and Maersk offers the only direct transatlantic container service between Ireland and the Americas, offering an important service to a growing export market for the dairy, pharma and drinks industry as well as imports of fruit and wines.” Following poor weather at the


start of the year, which affected farmers right across Ireland, imports of hay and fertiliser increased sharply. Despite this crisis, the dairy sector is already gearing up for upcoming reforms to the EU Common Agricultural Policy that will see payments directed more towards farmers who raise their animals in a “greener” way that relies less on supplemental feed. “It will be good for lo-lo,” says. “We


McCarthy already


export 80% of our agricultural produce and this could increase as we target the BRIC countries, especially India and China.” The port is preparing to resubmit


an application to build another deepwater berth at Ringaskiddy as the first phase in a strategic development plan designed to improve infrastructure in the lower harbour and help Ireland meet its longer-term capacity needs. The new berth would


accommodate container ships and con-ro vessels up to 300 metres long or approximately 3,000teu - the size of the current Maersk ship - and would involve investment of €40 to €50 million. McCarthy is “quietly confident”


that the scheme, now set to go before An Bord Pleanála next February, will get the go-ahead even though the planning authority rejected an earlier proposal in June 2008. That was in part on the grounds of poor road connections, but the


National Roads Authority recently committed to upgrading a key eight-mile section of road within the next 18 months and Cork County Council has confirmed it


will go proceed with the


required compulsory purchase programme. “That clears an important


obstacle,” McCarthy says. He believes the government’s review of national ports policy, published earlier this year, will help


accelerate the redevelopment process since it listed Cork as one of Ireland’s three Tier 1 ports of national significance.


“Cork has


also been designated as a core European Ten-T port, vital from an infrastructure as well as an environmental point of view,” he points out. “It won’t sit well with the whole


population, but jobs depend on our expansion, the region needs it and Ireland needs it.”


Grim up north? Not in Ireland


The Purchasing Managers’ Index, a key economic indicator, rose to 56.1 in Northern Ireland in July, up from 49.8 in June, ending more than five years of decline. Business activity, new orders, exports and employment all increased during the month. Early signs of recovery from


recession are partial good news for the port of Belfast, though commercial director Joe O’Neill remains cautious. “Manufacturing and the service sector are doing better, but construction is still holding back GDP,” he says. “Unemployment here was


7.5% in the April-June quarter, just below the UK average. Predicted public sector job cuts fortunately never materialised, but in no way is the mood like five or six years ago.”


A recent report from Danske


Bank predicts that the Northern Ireland economy will grow by only 0.5% this year, accelerating to 1.7% in 2014. Growing business and consumer confidence will lead to improved fortunes for the technology and agricultural sectors, the report says. Belfast saw a 12% increase in


overall tonnage in the first half of 2013, contrasting with a decline


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of 3% for UK ports as a whole, but there were some one-off factors. US coal, which used to be imported through an off-port terminal, is now discharged at the Stormont Wharf and volumes have increased thanks, ironically, to the increase in natural gas fracking and a resulting decrease in the price of coal. The port also benefited, like


its counterparts in the south, from large imports of animal feed following the cold, wet weather at


the start of the year. This helped trailer movements through Belfast to increase by 6.5% while box traffic was 3.8% down, thanks in part to Coastal Container Line’s reduction from two Liverpool sailings to one at the end of last year. An energy-from-waste facility


is at the planning stage on the County Down side of Belfast Harbour, where Dong Energy is currently constructing foundations and assembling turbines and blades for the West


of Duddon Sands offshore wind farm. Meanwhile


the port is


preparing a separate planning application to reclaim 25ha of land on the western, Antrim side beyond the VT4 Stena terminal. “We are projecting a 70% increase in tonnage to almost 30 million tonnes in our new 30-year master plan and 50ha will be required in all. We hope to complete phase one by 2015,” O’Neill says.


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