A Year - or so - in Multimodal Freight
new Chinese routes.
France’s President Francois Hollande vows to make France “an attractive territory” for busi- nesses that do not want to stay in the UK after it leaves the European Union. At a ceremony at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport to mark the start of a major hub extension for FedEx, he told as- sembled guests that the UK’s ‘Brexit’ decision was the start of “a new era and that the UK “will have to live with the consequences.”
Atlantic Container Line (ACL) officially launches its new fleet of transatlantic con ro ships when Princess Anne christens the Atlantic Sea in Liv- erpool on 20 October. Crowds line Liverpool’s waterfront to witness the first royal christening on the Mersey since 1960.
As widely expected, the government comes out in favour of a third runway for London Heathrow Airport as its preferred route to airport expansion in south-east England on 25 October. It submits the scheme as a draft ‘National policy statement’ for consultation. However, it still faces a number of obstacles before it becomes a reality, probably around 2025, including a House of Commons vote, with a number of high-profile Government figures, vehemently opposed to the plan, and possible legal challenges, along with protests from environmentalists and others. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling later launches a public consultation in February 2017.
The global freight industry, including UK-based Air Charter Service gear up to arrange emergen- cy flights to Haiti, following Hurricane Matthew earlier in the month, carrying anything from medicine to mosquito nets tarpaulins, jerry cans and buckets.
The UK-headquartered Global Shippers Forum and IATA interest group Cargo iQ sign a memo- randum of understanding with to improve qual- ity in airfreight at the TIACA Air Cargo Forum in Paris in late October. They pledge to implement the Cargo iQ quality management system and promote sustainability in airfreight and outlined areas where they would work together to create a more efficient, higher quality and secure air cargo supply chain.
November 2016
The three main Japanese-owned container lines – K Line, Mitsui OSK and NYK – say they are to merge, creating a million teu-plus grouping. A new joint-venture company will be formally es- tablished on 1 July 2017 but actual operations are not planned to start until 1 April, 2018.
AirBridgeCargo Airlines launches a twice-week- ly 747 freighter services between Heathrow and its Moscow hub, from 3 November, one of a very small number of all-cargo flights at the London gateway and the first new service for many years.
The new Liverpool2 container terminal is offi- cially opened on 4 November by the Secretary
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of State for International Trade, Dr Liam Fox MP. The £400 million investment by Peel Ports, one of the UK’s biggest port operators will allow Liver- pool to handle some of the biggest cargo vessels in the world. Liverpool currently has around 8% of the container market in the UK, and is already the country’s largest transatlantic port. This fig- ure is expected to rise to between 15% and 20%.
The Channel Tunnel has fundamentally changed the way the UK does business, and accounts for a massive slice of the entire UK’s exports and im- ports, says a new report by consultants Ernst & Young. It found that 30% of UK exports (£43.6bn) to the EU and 22% of imports (£47.8bn) from the EU depended on the speed, ease and reliability of the fixed link. Exports through the Tunnel alone supported 220,000 jobs in the UK.
Volga-Dnepr Airlines and Antonov Airlines say they will dissolve their An-124-100 freighter joint venture, Ruslan International, on 31 De- cember. The Russian and Ukrainian companies set Ruslan up in 2006 to jointly market their com- bined fleets and improve availability.
Volga-Dnepr said it would continue to operate a fleet of 12 of the aircraft, the largest of its kind in the world.
Shipping line Hapag-Lloyd sets up customer ser- vice desks for coffee in selected offices handling large volumes of the commodity. Staffed by spe- cialist employees, they include an export desk in Brazil and an import desk in Hamburg, Europe’s largest centre for coffee.
Air Charter Service’s Brazil and Florida offices charter Antonov Airlines’ giant AN-225 to carry the heaviest single piece of air cargo to be flown in the Americas, a 182 tonne transformer from São Paulo to Santiago de Chile. It is also the sec- ond heaviest single piece of cargo that has ever been transported by air anywhere in the world, only 5.7 tonnes short of the 187.7 tonne record set in 2009.
December 2016
Maersk Line says is to buy one of the last inde- pendent European shipping lines and the world’s seventh-largest operator, Hamburg Süd, from its owners, German-based Oetker. The move will create a container shipping giant, adding Hamburg Süd’s 625,000teu, 130-ship capaci- ty to Maersk Line, already the world’s biggest line, and creating an operator with a capacity of around 3.8 million teu and 741 ships. The new Maersk Line will have an 18.6% global capacity share compared with 15.7% currently.
The first turbine blade is manufactured at Sie- mens’ new wind power factory at ABP’s Port of Hull, the first of hundreds that are expected to be produced every year. The Siemens factory at Green Port Hull on Alexandra Dock is a £310m investment aimed at developing a world-class hub for offshore wind manufacturing, assembly and logistics.
CMA CGM adds a new APEX service between Liverpool, Bristol, Dublin, connecting directly to its West African services in Algeciras in southern Spain. At the same time, CMA CGM’s Nemo ser- vice to Reunion and Australia says it will switch its UK port of loading from Tilbury to London Gateway from 4 January.
Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company sign a strategic cooperation deal with Korea’s Hyundai Merchant Marine. Maersk says the deal is outside the scope of MSC and Maersk Line’s 2M vessel sharing agreement, but would give HMM access to the 2M network.
A UK-financed wall around the port of Calais is completed. Work on the €2.7m, 4-metre high wall had been ongoing for three months.
The Port of Felixstowe launches a year of cele- bration to mark its 50th anniversary as the UK’s first operational container terminal. The first dedicated container terminal opened in July 1967, initially with just 500ft of quay and a single Paceco Vickers portainer crane.
DP World begins work on the second and final phase of the DP World London Gateway Logistics Centre. It will create an additional 180,000sq ft of cross-dock distribution warehousing and of- fice space and will be available for occupation from May 2017.
January 2017
Maersk Line signs a deal with Asian online retail- er Alibaba to sell slots on its container vessels through its OneTouch booking website. CMA CGM later signs a similar deal, in February, with a direct booking platform for customers for ship- ments from China to the Mediterranean.
Dock workers stage a protest on 13 January over the lack of welfare facilities for workers and drivers visiting Peel Ports’ newly Liverpool2 container terminal. Members of the Unite union criticised the toilet facilities which it said were inadequate for the 350 workers at the site, the lack of hot food after 14:00 or at weekends.
Diplomats and rail industry officials gather at DB Cargo’s terminal in Barking on 18 January to cel- ebrate the arrival of the first container train ser- vice from China to the UK. The train originated in Yiwu near Shanghai and made the 7,500 mile journey to East London in 18 days, twice as fast as transport by sea. The service was operated as a trial but there are hopes that it will become a regular run if sufficient cargo can be found, es- pecially eastbound from the UK.
A consortium of lenders agrees a £200m pack- age to support the Port of Dover’s Western Docks Revival project including a purpose-built cargo and logistics facility. The Dover Western Docks Revival scheme will also allow the port to create
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