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Issue 1 2014 Freight Business Journal


NEWS ROUNDUP SHIPPING


CMA CGM Group started a major reorganisation of its services between North Europe, the Med and West Africa in mid-December including the addition of UK and Nigeria calls on its PC Weekly service. The seven 3,500teu vessels on the service will call at Tilbury on Tuesday for Tin Can Lagos along with other ports in Europe and West Africa. Four other services will link the major hub port of Tanger in Morocco with various ports in West Africa.


Short-sea shipping and logistics specialist OPDR will include a further two calls per week on its CISS Canary Island Services to Tilbury from mid-January. OPDR has also set up its own Moroccan company, OPDR Maroc Sarlau in Casablanca. The line offers up to three regular sailings per week to and from Morocco. A weekly direct service connects Tilbury and north European ports with Casablanca and vice-versa and a second via the Canary Islands. In December, OPDR launched a new service between Tilbury and Bilbao with four 700teu vessels operating a weekly schedule.


Peel Ports Group is restructuring its Ireland and Northern Ireland teams, aſter a recent review of activities at its Belfast and Dublin container terminals. Gerard Gaffney becomes the new head of container terminal operations for Ireland and will oversee operational activity at Peel Ports’ Belfast and Dublin container terminals. He will be joined by further appointments which include Craig Meldrum as container terminals strategy manager (Ireland), Garry Malone as engineering manager (Ireland), Dean Halliday as container terminals operations manager (Belfast) and Gerry Luccan as container terminal operations manager (Dublin).


Famous Pacific Shipping Group says that it has launched the first ever direct ocean LCL service between northern Europe and Fiji. The forwarding and NVOCC system’s new link uses weekly CMA CGM sailings from Rotterdam to Suva, slashing transit times from 55-60 to 36 days and eliminating the problems commonly experienced with LCL transhipments in remote ports. Customers can track their shipments online through the FPS tracking portal. The service is available for cargo from the UK.


NordiKmaritime is offering inducement calls at Tilbury as well as other North European ports to its project and break-bulk shipping service between Bilbao and Esbjerg. It also calls at Nantes, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Zeebrugge Bremen and Hamburg, as well as other Baltic and North Sea destinations, using flexible single hold vessels of about 4,000 dwt and LOA of 90-95 metres. There is also a feeder option, handled by NordiKmaritime itself, to other continents via the major hub ports of Northern Europe.


PD Ports has secured a new ten year contract with one of its most important customers, tea and coffee specialists Taylors of Harrogate. It will include a £1.75m refurbishment of PD Ports’ 115,000sq ſt warehousing facilities at Billingham, near Teesport. Work commenced on refurbishing the existing facilities at the end of the summer and is expected to be operational by mid 2014.


14203-Seatruck 270x60mm Advert 23/10/2012 1:47pm Page 1


///NEWS


Extra effort needed to unstick port bottlenecks, say MPs


The House of Commons Transport Committee has called on the government to do more to tackle UK ports’ bottlenecks in a report published on 26 November. MPs said that local bottlenecks were a key concern for many ports and, with the changes in local government structures and funding, arrangements for local major transport projects have changed significantly in recent years. The Committee heard oral


evidence from ports, freight interests and local authorities and also visited a number of UK ports. It added that the Department


for Transport (DfT) “could do more to promote ports’ interests within Government and internationally.” The Committee was “particularly concerned to hear suggestions that UK ports were put at a


competitive disadvantage when compared to foreign ports” when it came to publicly funding transport infrastructure. If the Government is in fact applying EU state aid rules more strictly than other member states, it should explain why it does so, it said. The planning system is also


very complex and the Committee called on DfT to explain what it considers to be the appropriate balance between environmental protection and economic development in relation to ports and in what ways this balance had altered since the present government came to power in 2010. The report called on the DfT


to act as an advocate for ports and to help the sector “navigate complex arrangements for getting transport improvement schemes


off the ground.” The Department should also be prepared to challenge decisions by local bodies if they failed to prioritise improvements in port access over other, less strategically important schemes. Government policy on


who should pay for transport infrastructure to


ports was


confused and “conceptually flawed”. Port operators are expected to pay for measures to mitigate increased traffic due to port expansion and guidance exists on when the Government should contribute to pay for measures that have wider benefits, but it has never been used. Some ports have contributed


to transport schemes, but others have not and the rationale for the different treatment is not


clear. DP World, for instance, has funded numerous local road improvements in and around its new London Gateway development but this appears to be the exception, not the rule, points out the committee. For


instance, an improvement


scheme on the A160/A180 near Immingham and the planned A63 upgrade in Hull will be publicly funded. The Committee also


recommended that the DfT gives a view on whether or not port master plans have had any impact and devise a more effective successor to the Waterborne Freight Grant to stimulate coastal shipping. It also asked it to clarify whether it plans to bring forward a National Policy Statement on National Networks and, if so, to produce a timetable.


PORT OPERATORS FACE CONGESTION FRUSTRATION


In the hearings, port operators told the committee of their frustrations in dealing with congestion, often in their immediate hinterland. A spokesman for the port of Liverpool said that he faced “a bottleneck within the final three miles of the journey from the motorway to the port” while the British Ports Association referred to frequent problems in the final two miles to the port. Felixstowe pointed out that its rail link was only a single- track branch line. Recent and continuing changes to local government structures also meant that it was difficult for port operators to know who to approach when advocating transport improvements. Planners and industry interests spoke of not only the complexity, but also the uncertainty of funding under the new arrangements in which Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) are supposed to decide on how to allocate transport funding. Funding for local transport has also been drastically cut. Rail funding arrangements also came in for some criticism, but generally there was a much greater focus on long term planning, said the report. The committee concluded that the DfT should do more to ensure that LEPs properly considered port schemes


and that they were not overlooked “because they might not obviously benefit local people or businesses.” It should also be prepared to challenge LEP decisions that failed to prioritise port access improvements over other, less strategically important schemes. Commenting on the report, UK Major Ports Group executive director Richard Bird said: “The Transport Committee has recognised the vital role that ports play in the UK economy and have made some practical suggestions about how transport connections to ports can be improved. We are already working in partnership with Government to ensure there is greater awareness of the strategic importance of ports. We trust that the Government will now act quickly to put the Committee’s proposals into effect.” • Transport


Minister Baroness Kramer has given


approval for work on the A5758 Broom’s Cross road (Thornton to Switch Island Link) scheme on Merseyside to start. The scheme consists of a new 2.6 mile single carriageway road between the A565 Southport Road, Thornton and the M57/M58 Switch Island junction, bypassing Netherton and Thornton north of Liverpool. It will improve access to the Port of Liverpool and development sites in the area.


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