16


Issue 1 2018 - Freight Business Journal


///SOUTHAMPTON


Perhaps more than anywhere else in the UK, Southampton can claim to be the UK’s last major maritime city. The industry in all its various forms – ports, handlers, freight forwarders and hauliers – dominates the local economy to a much greater extent than any other large urban area.


City on the water


Success across the board for DP World


DP World Southampton is set in 2017 to match 2016’s record- breaking container numbers, says chief executive, Nick Loader. “With the changes in the shipping line alliances, there has been a big change in the mix, and in many ways it has been a year of big changes, but overall there is no change in our volumes.” Now fully owned by global


operator DP World since it bought out ABP’s share of the business in October 2015, DP World Southampton was at the time of our interview the only UK port where all three of the major container line alliances continue to call – 2M, Ocean Alliance and THE Alliance. 2M (Maersk and MSC) has


since announced that it is pulling its Asia-Europe AE1 service out of the port but it will still maintain a feeder service. One change that he has noticed


is that traffic in the port has become “more peaky”, a trend that set in before the alliance changes with the introduction of the new generation of mega containerships. Southampton recently handled its record ship discharge, 7,000 boxes (not teu) from the MSC Jade. Loader explains: “Bigger


exchanges mean more peaks and troughs, so we have to be smarter at managing that. For example, we have amended our vehicle booking system – which we first introduced in 2005 – several times and we have also worked hard on how we stack things in the yards. And our productivity continues to increase” – a factor that Loader attributes to DP World’s “culture of improvement”. On the wider IT front, DP World is working on a ‘Where’s


my container’ package that will make it possible for shippers to find out the exact status of their cargo. Meanwhile, the ships continue


to get bigger and bigger. DP World Southampton broke


its own


record for ship size twice in 2017, with the MOL Triumph – at the time, the largest ship in the world – topped a few months later by the even bigger Milan Maersk in November. One of the ‘selling points’ of


the new larger vessels is that they are also greener. The Milan Maersk’s total emissions are not so very much higher than ships a quarter of its size 20 years ago, so carbon per box is way lower than in the old days. More generally, clean air is


at the forefront of DP World Southampton’s thinking. It has, for instance, acquired five electric vehicles for use on the berth and each generation of straddle carriers is greener than before.


(Two more 24-across


Liebherr units are due to join the existing ten in March next year.) But perhaps the biggest


concern is what happens when containers go out of the port gate. “We have made a big effort to encourage rail transport,” says Loader. “Rail accounts for about 35% of the total traffic; but it has been higher in the past, and we still aspire to 40%.” Elimination of the government


subsidy for rail freight could though put a dent in the rail figure when that happens, while the earlier reduction in fuel prices has already pushed the rail figure down from its peak. “We don’t know what the effect of eliminating the subsidy will be yet, but it could take us in the wrong direction,” states Loader.


On the plus side, Southampton


now has three rail container train operating companies, with GB Railfreight recently starting a service to Hams Hall near Birmingham. Freightliner and DB Cargo already have long- established operations at the port, with services on the longer routes to North-West England being particularly strong. With


the completion of


area are generally pretty good – it is one of the few UK major ports that can boast motorway access virtually to the dock gate – but a few improvements such as the Redbridge Roundabout at the end of the M271 link motorway and upgrading the junction between the M3 and A34 trunk road to the Midlands would help. Like all big cities, traffic in and around Southampton can gum up at peak times. As for deepsea-to-deepsea


business, it is a little ad hoc. It is oſten the result of bottlenecks elsewhere, for example shipping lines


looking to reposition boxes on the US/China trade


services. However, says Loader, there


are shippers who appreciate the typical 26 day transit time from the Far East to Southampton and around 13 days or so to and from North America. “Of course, it’s not critical for everyone.


If


you’re importing Christmas decorations, you tend to order them well in advance and use the cheapest option, but for a lot of freight, time is important – for example, motor manufacturers,” Loader explains. He continues: “We can also


prioritise despatch of containers, should a customer ask for it, if it is genuinely urgent, and we can even look at the order in which they are unloaded from the ship.” Interestingly, around 95%


of boxes on ships arriving in Southampton are customs cleared within 15 minutes, food for thought in these days when the effect of Brexit is


being widely discussed.


Southampton’s fast transit times are appreciated by firms like Honda, says DP World’s Nick Loader (centre)


the gauge-enhancement


programme on rail routes between Southampton, the Midlands and North, there is plenty of capacity and now significant limits on train paths, says Loader. Not to be forgotten are water-


borne short sea feeder services, with Xpress Feeders regular service to Liverpool. While the proportion of Southampton’s traffic handled by this mode is a little difficult to determine – the 7% quoted includes


for transhipment deepsea-to-deepsea


business – it perhaps adds another 5% or so to rail’s figure, giving a total of 40% on rail and water. Roads in


the Southampton


lane lacking space on direct Transpacific services. A big selling point for


Southampton is the speed of service it can offer, compared with other UK ports. Geography helps here as ships heading to or from Asia and North America go right past the port, giving Southampton ‘last out, first in’ advantage over its rivals. There is though quite a bit of competition in this space. As well as airfreight - the traditional means of moving urgent freight – there are also the new rail services that have started up between China and Europe, although DP World as a company has benefited from this as its London Gateway facility is the sole UK terminal for such


Manifests are available days before arrival, unlike short-sea shipping, so the situation is not entirely analogous with what goes on on the Channel, but it does go to show what might be possible with sufficient advance information. For the future, Loader


is confident that DP World Southampton can continue to cater for increased traffic, on bigger ships. Following the major programme a few years ago to deepen berths in preparation for the mega ships, “we are always looking to see if we can deepen further, but in fact at the moment it’s not a huge issue. Ships aren’t getting deeper – they’re wider and their stacking higher, so depth is not necessarily an issue.” More terminal capacity


could be squeezed out of the existing land area, for example by demolishing and relocating buildings. “There’s probably more of an issue with peaks and troughs than there is with overall


capacity, but we will become even better at handling those,” he predicts. Container stacking capacity


at the port has been pushed up to just under 40,000teu – a few years ago it was generally only 25,000teu, perhaps 30,000teu in the peak. Also, he adds: “Even things like


GPS can make a big difference, by allowing us to monitor exactly where everything is in the yard.” Nor is there any shortage of


container port capacity in the UK as whole, with new berths recently opening in Felixstowe, Liverpool’s


new berth of London and


the inauguration of the first phase


Gateway.


The latter hasn’t had much, if any discernible effect on Southampton’s own volumes, says Loader. “In fact, it’s very good as we can offer customers like THE Alliance a two-port solution.” There is some space for centric’


‘port activities in


Southampton, though Loader agrees that the port and city isn’t awash with spare land. The situation in Southampton is rather different from London Gateway with its huge distribution park,


but there


are operators such as Import Services carrying out pre-retail work and developments such as


the new centre for John


Lewis recently opened by Peel Logistics Property on the city outskirts. ABP, the landlord of the


port of Southampton – which includes major car, bulk and cruise operations – does have ambitions to open up land on the west side of Southampton Water, including the land around Marchwood military port and the Dibden Bay area. It’s probably not something that would directly interest DP World, says Loader but such schemes would be helpful in taking some of the pressure off on its side of the water.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20