NORTH WEST\\\ Carrying on up the Canal


The Port Salford inland terminal project near Manchester is on track to be delivered by 2015/16, says Peel Ports Mersey’s head of business development


Stephen Carr. A


preliminary project to realign local roads is nearing completion and plans are well-advanced for a link to the national rail network. Meanwhile, container traffic on


the Canal is growing well – 23,000 boxes in 2013, compared with 15,000 the year before. The feeder service from Liverpool port


is


operating three sailings a week, which fits in well with the deep sea shipping services it connects with. Elsewhere on the canal, Ellesmere Port is once again a


port with a terminal operated by Quality Freight and regular calls by the Terra Marique heavy-liſt vessel – Ellesmere Port is the Highways Agency’s preferred transfer point for abnormal loads onto the motorway network. Runcorn Docks’ sheds are full of


dry bulk traffic and a new company has revived Port Warrington.


On time and within budget


Construction of Liverpool2 is still on track, despite weather delays, thanks to some deſt work by the contractors. One of the most time consuming processes, piling of the reclaimed land, has been started. This part of the project had looked like slipping but by creating an


artificial dam halfway across the reclaimed area, rather than waiting for the whole of it to be enclosed, this crucial part of the project is now under way, says MD Gary Hodgson. “The contractors have a credible recovery plan and we’re still on track for the third quarter of 2015


for opening of Phase 1.” Handling equipment will be delivered in two phases; one unknown is how much of a gap, if any, there will between the two stages. And, so far, with 70% of the


spending commuted, the project is within budget.


Steeling a march on the competition


Trucks are positively whizzing through Liverpool’s new steel terminal with waiting times cut from 80 to 60 minutes since the new facility opened, says Gary Hodgson. The secret is a new internet-based booking system that means that coils can be positioned ready for collection, in advance of the vehicle’s arrival. The same approach works


on the inbound side – as soon as the ship’s manifest becomes know, the information can be fed into the terminal’s IT system and storage of the incoming cargo strategically planned in advance. True, some shipping lines are better at providing the information in electronic form than others – there has to be an element of manual re-keying from


faxes and the like – but it is still a huge advance on what happened before. The efficient new terminal is


mirrored by steel traffic at the port, which has grown by 25% over the last year, well ahead of the market average. “Some of it is a rebound in markets like construction, but a lot is new business,” Hodgson explains.


Nvision sees the future of freight auditing


Chances are, freight audit and pay services are not on many companies’ radar at the moment, but it is likely to become an important feature of the logistics landscape in future, says Dominic McGough, EMEA managing director for Ellesmere Port-based nVision Global. The origins of the concept


go back to the Enron scandal in the US, which prompted the US authorities to drastically tighten up companies’ financial accounting through the Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Act. Companies’ transportation payments were included as part of that, to the extent that 90% of US firms now use a freight audit and pay service. And, while there hasn’t been the same legislative impetus in Europe, the idea is gathering pace there too – and the same will surely happen in the UK, argues McGough. He describes himself as “a


necessary evil” as far as the freight industry is concerned. Like it or


not, freight spending will come under increased scrutiny from the financial people and companies like nVision can at least make the process less painful. What nVision has done is write some clever soſtware that automates the freight auditing process, McGough explains. Given the sheer volume of transactions involved, it is the only way large companies could expect to cope. A further bonus is that it creates


a ‘dashboard’ that gives the company an overall view of its logistics and transport spending across all its different carriers and service providers and in fact, “some companies are coming to us solely for our


logistics


intelligence services,” McGough says. It’s also possible to show carbon emissions, he adds. In fact, many European firms, who are not necessarily subject to the SOX law, use it more as a decision- making rather than a compliance tool.


Very oſten, what the audit process uncovers, is not deliberate fraud, but errors, or out of date information. (One senior shipping line executive recently boasted that his invoicing was 90% correct, which possibly is something to write home about by current standards in the shipping industry.) The process can also help financial directors better analyse their freight spending and, if necessary, ask questions such as whether there is an over-reliance on premium freight services or unnecessary use of airfreight, for example. How much freight gets delivered express and then sits for days in a warehouse, for example? But there are benefits to


the freight service provider too, McGough argues:


“If the


forwarder bills correctly, they will get paid quicker.” It’s also possible to get vital information such as prevailing rates for specific trade lanes.


Issue 2 2014 - Freight Business Journal


Quality Freight delivers new power station by canal


39


Ellesmere Port-based Quality Freight has transported some of the components for Alstom’s new power station in Trafford, Manchester via its local port. The modules are being shipped into


Ellesmere Port – whose


owner, Peel Ports, recently announced a plan to market the the location as as a logistics hub – and discharged using specialist heavy lift gear.


NVOCC looks south


Having grown to the point of being the UK’s third-largest NVOCC, Manchester-based Cardinal Maritine has set its sights further afield. It has just opened an office in Basildon, east London to give itself an inroad into the southern UK market. “We are perceived as being a north-west operator and while we


already have a good market in the Heathrow area, we want to do more in the east London and Essex areas,” says brand managing director, Rick White. Cardinal is also receiving cargo


in Basildon and will shortly start loading boxes there, he said. Having a southern base would save


unnecessarily hauling freight north to be consolidated, White pointed out. But the Cardinal has also set his


sights further afield. A new Dublin office will open on 3 April but this will only be a precursor to a wider expansion of the Cardinal brand across Europe over the next 2-3 years.


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