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Issue 8 2017 - Freight Business Journal


///FRANCE & CHANNEL PORTS


Space shortages fail to deflect Dachser’s growth


UK managing director of forwarder, Dachser, Nick Lowe, says that in September, aſter the summer holiday period, there was a shortage of available truck capacity, especially for exports from the UK. This may have had something to do with truck scheduling and rotation in the market in general, as well as with the general and European- wide issue of the shortage of truck drivers, “not only in long-distance


but also in local distribution”. In France, Dachser finds that it


is getting increasingly difficult to find skilled drivers and logistics staff, across the entire transport and logistics sector as a whole. According to French employer organisations, there are currently at least 20 000 jobs waiting to be filled. Nevertheless, says Lowe, “by steadily increasing our market


share in our European export business - despite the imbalances in trade between the UK and the Continent - we are able to make extensive use of Dachser- controlled round-trip services to and from the Continent, which helps us to manage truck capacities effectively. “In addition, we have a wide


range of approved haulage sub- contractors, several of which are


Cool, calm - and collected from Dover


Reefer specialist Cool Carriers will bring its Coolman Central America and West Indies service to Dover Cargo Terminal from January. Dover Cargo Terminal is the


lesser-known, general cargo operation at the UK’s busiest ro ro port. The terminal currently handles around 250,000 tonnes a year of bulk palletised and containerised, mainly perishable cargo. The company, which has


invested heavily in boosting both the palletised and container capacities of its fleet, says its decision was prompted in part by the port’s Dover Western Docks Revival project which will create a new cargo terminal and logistics hub. Michael Bergman, Line


Manager at Cool Carriers, cited “Dover’s geographical location in relation to our clients’ distribution centres, as well as the massive infrastructure investment at the port, and our requirements for the efficient handling of our new vessels which will enter service in early 2020.” Cool Carriers will ship mainly bananas and pineapples


from


Costa Rica, Colombia and the Dominican Republic to Dover, where current facilities include a dedicated 180m berth, 130 reefer plug-in points, and temperature controlled storage for 7,500 pallets. However, new facilities under


the Dover Western Docks Revival (DWDR) scheme are due to come on stream towards the end of 2018, and will include two new cargo berths (251m and up to 350m); a cargo terminal building


with eight temperature controlled compartments, each capable of holding cargo between +1 and +14 degrees Celsius; and mobile harbour cranes capable of handling up to post panamax-size vessels. DWDR is on schedule, says


Dover communications manager Chris Talbot, with piling nearing completion ahead of schedule in mid-November and work about to start on the land reclamation stage. Construction of the new refrigerated cargo terminal is due to start at the beginning of the second quarter of 2018 and is scheduled to be complete in late 2018 or early 2019. The new berths should be ready


to receive their first test ships in the first quarter of 2019. Also out for tender are the


new mobile harbour cranes, and specifications for a warehouse management system have been issued. There is a further stage of


DWDR that will see further land reclamation and infilling to create a new port centric logistics hub, but the port is currently waiting to see if it will gain authorisation to take material from the Goodwin Sands for the project. If not, it would have to use more expensive commercially- available material, which would necessitate a rethink on how the scheme would be financed and, possibly, rescheduling. But the other elements of DWPR are by no means dependent on the logistics hub.


Dover general manager Sam Stewart says the berths would


was taken very much with the new facilities in mind, because it will allow them to expand and use bigger ships.” The new terminal’s cargo


facilities will be much more flexible with dock levellers throughout, and will allow cargoes to be swiſtly cross-docked and despatched. Typically, the ships used on the


reefer services have a mixture of conventional, palletised cargo and reefer containers. The new DWDR berths would


also allow Dover to go aſter additional, similar business, he adds.


is that it is at the heart of the UK’s fresh produce warehousing and storage industry; Kent is full of refrigerated warehouses, conditioning and ripening sheds and so on. “It certainly was a factor in the decision to put the Coolman service into Dover,” says Dixon. On opening of DWDR, the old


Dover general cargo terminal – which is close to the ro ro terminal at Eastern Docks – will be levelled and the space used to augment space in the freight buffer zone. It will virtually double the existing space, which can accommodate 5km of trucks parked end-to-end,


allow Dover to handle much bigger reefer ships than the current 186 metre length – up to 225m and manoeuvring would also be greatly improved. Currently, Dover handles the


Seatrade service from Colombia and Ecudador via the Panama Canal which, together with the newly-won Coolman service, would transfer to the new berths when they open. Dover business development manager Nick Dixon says: “Cool Carriers decision to move to Dover [from Portsmouth]


used both by Dachser UK and our other European country organisations, which helps us to manage and meet our day to day capacity requirements for our main services; we are less active in the ‘spot’ market.” Dachser UK´s export groupage


volumes to France continue to increase as it wins new business in line with its strategy to focus on pan-European export services and


Dover is an attractive location


for reefer traffic, says Dixon. It is a 24-hour port and it is right on the main shipping lanes into the north-west continental ports. “We have minimum deviation from the main shipping lines; we are the closest of any UK port.” Another Dover strength is that


there is a ready supply of empty refrigerated vehicles returning from the UK to the Continent looking for loads (the fresh produce trade by road is heavily imbalanced) so it can be cost effective for a ship to discharge produce from Latin America and to truck it from Dover to Paris or Amsterdam rather than from a continental port. Another advantage of Dover


has seen a double digit increase in our sales turnover year-on year in 2017 so far, says Lowe. Dachser has direct services


every day into several of branches and platforms in France, and also daily direct connections to its Eurohub at Ueberherrn, near Saarbruecken and the French/ German border on which groupage shipments to certain departments in France and certain postcodes in Germany will be bundled. Lowe explains: “This is a good


example of how we are able to utilise our European network to good effect in terms of operational efficiencies and concretely defined lead times within our entargo range of products.


to 10km. This may sound a lot, but to put it into context, a typical day’s ro ro traffic in Dover would stretch from there to the Thames Estuary. A long term solution is needed


to truck parking, not just for Dover but in Kent as a whole, where lorry drivers holed up in unsuitable laybys have become a sore point with the locals. The government, having overturned its decision in 2016 to build a large new lorry park at Stanford West near Dover, is now once again considering its options, but the port of Dover’s clear preference is for a site on the M20. Alternatives, such as the former Manston Airport, near Ramsgate, are just too remote from the main routes, it says. Something else the port would


like clarity on is the likely effect of Brexit on traffic flows through Dover and, at the time of writing, management were hoping that some information would be forthcoming by Christmas 2017. In this it is joined by the logistics industry throughout the north- west Continent, which would clearly be adversely affected if traffic failed to move smoothly across the Channel. All these debates are taking


place against a background of increasing and, indeed, record traffic through Dover. The port has carried out various pieces of land reclamation and tweaked operations to ensure that trucks continue to flow, although future large-scale reclamation is likely to be increasingly expensive and difficult, not least because of much more stringent environmental regulations. For the moment, says Chris


Talbot: “The ferry terminal is running well, and we have the optimum number of vessels coming in and out - there are around 120


ferry movements Dachser has been investing in its


French facilities in the last couple of years, he continues. There has been an upgrading and rescaling of branches in Niort, Paris-Wissous, Paris-Pantin, Reims, Troyes, Fréjus, Angers and La Verrie. In contract logistics Dachser, has increased its storage capacity to meet the needs of customers in Reims and Salon de Provence. Dachser has 69 local branches in


France to serve its local customers and also located its third Eurohub in Clermont-Ferrand right in the centre of the country. This allows it to transport local goods to everywhere in France and 13 other European countries within defined lead times.


per day. The ferry companies are talking about bigger ships, but there’s nothing concrete as yet.” There is some spare capacity on berths eight and nine, so there is still some room for growth, at least within the port. What is perhaps more of a


constraint are the main roads leading in and out of Dover. The port has been lobbying the government intensively to allow dualling of the A2 route into Dover, which would make a huge difference. So far, a new TAP (Traffic


Assistance Protocol) management system has kept things moving on the main link, the A20, by using a lane on a section of the road outside the town as a buffer zone, along with traffic lights controlled by sophisticated computer soſtware which can ‘learn’ when traffic peaks are likely to occur – for example two large ferries arriving at the same time on the evening. Crucially, the system has also prevented the town centre becoming blocked with stationery trucks. Another new traffic that


has developed in Dover is project cargo, namely new and refurbished transformers for the nearby Sellindge power station. These are moved by road from Sellindge to Dover And are then loaded via a pad on the existing general cargo terminal (which will remain in use aſter the rest of the operation switches to the new DWDR facility) and finally barge from there to the Siemens plant in Germany. The operation is repeated in reverse to return the refurbished transformers. The new mobile harbour


cranes, which will have a capacity of 124 tonnes each, will further enhance Dover’s heavyliſt capabilities.


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