Peel goes for customer appeal with Irish Sea hub


18


Peel Ports, which handles 30% of all containers entering and leaving the island of Ireland, is promoting an ‘Irish Sea hub’ concept. The idea is that customers moving


goods to


and from Ireland can exploit the synergies and common working practices of


terminals


in Liverpool and Greenock - MTL (Marine Terminals Ltd) in Dublin and Victoria Terminal 3 (VT3) in Belfast, backed by BG Line, Peel’s feeder service. Enquiries are up following Peel


Ports’ restructure, completed in July 2013. Has this translated into genuine new business yet? “It takes time to get the brand out there and it needs long-term commitment by customers, but there is real interest in our one- stop shop approach,” says Peel’s head of port operations Ireland, Gerard Gaffney. “Longer term, we will also look at multi-user warehousing opportunities.” Peel Ports is well placed


to reposition empties while minimising road miles and is actively selling this opportunity to customers, points out Gerry Luccan, MTL operations manager. Boxes arriving in Felixstowe or Southampton and emptying in the Midlands or north-west England can be transported a short distance to Port Salford


instead of all the way back south. Vessels carrying up to 150 containers can take the all-water route down the Manchester Ship Canal to Liverpool or continue across to Ireland as required. Peel Ports points out that 82.5%


of laden containers arriving into its Irish Sea facilities also leave laden, far ahead of the UK average of 54%. Alcohol, dairy products, fish


and pharmaceuticals are leading the growth in containerised exports. “In the bottom of the recession we were stuffing reefers with non-refrigerated cargo but now there is a big trade in fish from places like Donegal and Glenarm [north of Belfast],” Gaffney says. Maersk,


for example, is


transporting large tonnages of Irish mackerel and salmon from Dublin via Felixstowe or Rotterdam to customers in Asia and west Africa. This increase in refrigerated


shipments is creating a reefer imbalance and container lines, long familiar with repositioning boxes into Cork, are now having to do the same at Dublin. Ambient export cargoes


include clothing, groupage shipments and waste paper, currently a major export flow to Asia. Only one container line used to be much interested in the latter


low-value cargo, Gaffney says - but “now they are all moving into it”. Underlining its commitment to the growing Irish export market, Peel Ports has become a member of the Irish Exporters Association. On the import


Luccan proudly points out side, Peel is


handling a lot of fresh fruit from Iberia as well as potatoes, he adds. Yes, you heard it here first – Ireland is importing potatoes. Chip shops apparently prefer starchier European varieties. Securing


the fruit traffic


meant extending opening hours in Dublin to include Sundays, enabling markets to be accessed with the fresh produce on Monday morning. “There’s more competition between the terminals in Dublin than elsewhere. You have to go the extra mile,” Gaffney says.


“the longest run [stack] of three- high containers we’ve seen since the start of the recession” as he shows FBJ round the MTL facility, which boasts Dublin’s longest continuous berth at 750 metres. He detects a “noticeably different pulse” to the market in the last couple of months. Peel Ports’ Irish Sea


connectivity will further improve when Liverpool2 opens at the end of 2015, enabling more direct services to call at the port and making it a more efficient feeder hub for the Irish market. Liverpool2


will have a


“gold standard” Navis N4 terminal operating and vessel management system, Gaffney says. This will later be rolled out in Dublin and Belfast too - though at


the latter this will depend on Peel Ports retaining the right to operate VT3. Belfast Harbour has decided


to consolidate its two container terminals into one. It will be the larger VT3 facility that remains open, as it has a 375-metre berth and 9 metres of water, compared with Irish Continental Group’s BCT terminal upstream which has only a 140-metre berth at 7.5 metres. “The BCT facility will close


because it’s not only smaller, but has more restricted access,” says Joe O’Neill, commercial director for Belfast Harbour. ICG and Peel Ports have both bid for the VT3 concession, and the harbour authority has promised a decision by the end of this year. “From our perspective


there’s potential to invest in infrastructure and upgrade the facilities,” Gaffney says. VT3’s throughput of 132,000teu in 2006, ahead of the recession, was close to the terminal’s then


capacity but could go higher now thanks to new shiſt patterns and improved electronic data interchange. He believes the appropriate investment now could take capacity to 200,000 teu.


VT3 increased its throughput


by 5% in the first quarter. In contrast to southern Irish ports, up to 70% of laden traffic here is imports, says operations manager Dean Halliday. Some growth has come because during the downturn, customers were ordering to demand, whereas now they are stockpiling again. Peel Ports has expanded its


engineering and maintenance team by 30% in Ireland over the last year, adding 6% to its overall workforce, and is also taking on apprentices. As part of the company’s drive improve


to service, Gaffney


says customers will soon have visibility


of its performance


against KPIs such as vessel and haulier turnaround times.


New ferry gives Holyhead-Dublin space to grow


Irish Ferries’ volumes were up 18.5% at 118,000 units in the first half of the year. The ro-ro market is seeing steady recovery, but the main factor was the extra capacity provided by the Epsilon, chartered at the end of 2013 to provide a third frequency on the peak freight days of Tuesday to Saturday on the Dublin-Holyhead route. With space for 40 freight units,


Epsilon is a little smaller than the operator’s flagship Ulysses, but nevertheless


has significantly


expanded the offering on the key central corridor. Irish Ferries’ owner, Irish


Continental Group (ICG), reported 8.1% revenue growth to €130.7 million in the six months to June 30. The group reported half- year EBITDA earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of €17 million excluding the Epsilon, 7.6% up from €15.8 million in the first half


since Epsilon is a more freight- orientated vessel than the Oscar Wilde that serves the Rosslare/ Cherbourg route. The Saturday departure


of 2013, but start-up costs for the new vessel reduced this figure to €14 million and group pre-tax profit accordingly fell by 18.2% to €2.7 million. ICG described its move as


“restoring some lost competitive advantage”. Critics complain that it has depressed prices just as the Irish Sea ro-ro market was stabilising. Not so, claims Irish Ferries’


freight manager, Eugene Carron. “We needed to maintain a pricing structure, and rates have held up. We have a vested interest in that because we were the biggest player [on that route] anyway.


“The Ulysses can only offer


a certain number of departure times, so you do get leſt behind a bit. There are massive start-up costs and it takes time to build business up, but we’re now running 25% ahead year on year. The projections are that we’ll see even greater growth next year.” Epsilon


also operates a


weekly Dublin-Cherbourg link to complement Irish Ferries’ existing Rosslare-Cherbourg service. She departs Dublin on Saturday evening, returning next day. Although the crossing takes 17


hours, the new routing takes the European offering to a new level


capitalises on the peak export day for Irish Sea freight exports. “It’s the maximum passenger day as well, but we can carry 120 freight vehicles even with a maximum car load,” Carron says. “From a standing start, the route has far exceeded our expectations so far.” ICG’s Container and Terminal


Division, which includes shipping line Eucon as well as the DFT container terminal in Dublin and BCT in Belfast, saw turnover increase by 2.9% to €53.7 million in the first half, with operating profit unchanged at from the previous year at €2.4 million. The total number of containers


shipped was up 1.5% at 142,700 teu. There was a 7.3% increase in units liſted at the two group terminals, reaching 92,700 liſts.


Issue 7 2014 - Freight Business Journal


///IRELAND


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