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Issue 2 2014 Freight Business Journal
///NORTH WEST
There’s something in the water – and in the air
A brand-new container terminal, the biggest airport logistics development in the country for many years – it’s all happening in the North-West. Has the region got the potential to reshape the way the UK handles its sea- and air-borne trade? Chris Lewis investigates
Reshaping the shipping map
It’s wrong to think of Liverpool2 as a northern alternative to Felixstowe or Southampton. Liverpool2 is not about creating additional deep sea container capacity for the UK – it’s about creating more capacity in the right place, argues Peel Ports Mersey managing director Gary Hodgson. Southern UK ports cater largely for the
import trade, but “one benefit will be our proximity to the major export areas of Scotland and Ireland,” he points out. Loaded containers brought into Liverpool will only have a short repositioning move
to those
two countries compared with 400 miles-plus from the South, and only a short journey back to Liverpool before joining the
mother vessel for the journey back east. The North-west is a big
importer as well, but the current pattern of trade is dictated more by berth capacity than cargo flows. “For example, the North is a big importer from India but most ships on that trade go into south-east England ports because they are now too big for
Liverpool.” And the same is true of scrap exports out of the North back to India. With
the North-west the
dominant region for UK food manufacturing, South American services could also be a major factor in an enlarged Liverpool port. Again, this is a service that was once within the port’s remit but with vessel size trending towards the 10,000teu mark, it’s been quite a while since the port was a serious contender for this trade. Even ships on some Eastern Mediterranean services are hitting the 5,000teu mark. Again, a widened Panama Canal – due to open in December 2015, at around the same time as Liverpool2, although contractual disputes might push back the South American scheme - could bring further possibilities as ships get bigger. Hodgson has dug up a telling
statistic: “In the early days of containerisation, the ports of Liverpool and Manchester between them had a 19% market share. With Liverpool2 open, we’ll be able to take 18% of the trade again. What it will do is
allow the market to reach its natural level once again.” Peel Ports is talking to
shipping lines, of course, but with opening of the new port not scheduled until late 2015, it’s still rather early days – not least because the future shape and size of the shipping industry itself is still unknown. At the time of writing, at least, no one knew whether the P3 Alliance will be allowed to go ahead, still less its effect on other services. All Hodgson can say at this
stage is that Liverpool will be targeting services to India, South America and maybe a niche Far East trade. What it won’t be doing is knocking on Maersk’s door and suggesting that they
transfer a major Far East trade out of a southern UK port. But Liverpool is also
considering the possibility of ‘super feeder’ services. While the P3 plans are still very much up in the air, an early draſt of the new alliance’s proposed schedule suggests that none of the super- large ‘Triple E’ services will be calling in the UK, which could open up the possibility for large feeder ships calling in a range of UK ports, including Liverpool, Hodgson points out: “With the productivity of our new cranes, a big feeder ship could exchange 2,500 containers per call, which would be ideal for a service to and from the Continental hub ports.”
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