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Issue 5 2021 - Freight Business Journal


government - owned operator


of last resort - at the height of the Covid pandemic, when passenger numbers slumped. The first document to be


published was the report by the Burns Commission which was set up in 2019 aſter plans for a M4 Newport relief road were abandoned. (FBJ readers may remember that among other things, the road would have severely affected operations at Newport, Wales’


busiest


general cargo port although the plans were modified before the scheme was eventually cancelled.) The Burns Commission held a consultation in mid-2020,


to which RFG responded, and published its final report in November. Burns proposed upgrading the local passenger service on the South Wales main line from Cardiff via Newport and the Severn Tunnel into a ‘metro’ style service of frequent trains in a bid to cut road travel and take some of the pressure off the now unmodified M4. However, the proposal


alarmed Robin Smith and RFG, as it suggested transferring long- distance intercity trains from the current pair of passenger lines to the current freight lines, which would be upgraded for higher speeds. The problem with this, says Mr Smith is that all the connections to major freight


Government ‘will impose Welsh freeport’


Welsh secretary Simon Hart says the Westminster government will develop a freeport in Wales even if the Welsh government does not agree, according to a BBC report. Hart told a committee of MPs “we would rather do it as a


team effort than have to resort to reserved powers, but it is a commitment”. According to the report,


Welsh government ministers have raised concerns and sought an agreement on the plans.


Stena’s Estrid in happy return to Holyhead


Stena Line is bringing its new Stena Estrid vessel back to the Holyhead – Dublin route with the expectation that travel restrictions between Ireland and Britain will be removed. She will


replace the Stena


Horizon which returns to the Rosslare – Cherbourg route. Stena had swapped the ships


due to increased freight demand on direct routes to France and low travel volumes between Holyhead and Dublin. However, the end of lockdowns have increased freight volumes again,


prompting a switch back to pre- lockdown roles for the vessels. Stena Estrid will provide two daily return crossings each way between Holyhead and Dublin. Stena Line’s trade director, Paul Grant, said: “With huge pent- up demand for travel between Britain and Ireland, and the added bonus of Duty Free, now’s the right time to switch Stena Estrid back. Stena Horizon will again operate alongside Stena Foreteller on Rosslare – Cherbourg, offering 12 sailings per week to France.


Gary Phillips and his team will be looking to further develop personal effects business between the Caribbean and the UK as he takes up his new role as general manager at JP Shipping Services – including the local markets in the south of Wales and the South West.


JP Shipping – originally


Jamaica Producers Shipping – is headquartered in Newport, a historic arrangement that dates back to when it ran ships into the docks there. These days, the vessels now operate mainly into London Gateway and Portsmouth and there is a receiving depot in Rainham, east London, but the operation is still administered from Wales. “A lot of the business is personal


effects, in both directions between the UK and the Caribbean. A lot of it is centred in places like London,


One possibility are new


services from South America while another, which is already


terminals such as Freightliner’s Wentloog site, Newport docks and the Llanwern steelworks are all on what were the freight lines. It is unclear how lengthy freight trains crawling over speed- restricted junctions in and out of terminals would mix with 100mph passenger services, without severely restricting the operation of either. Disturbingly, the Burns Report


is silent on this, says Mr Smith who points out that it would be very difficult to accommodate even existing freight flows under such a scenario, let along allow for any growth. Nor was freight satisfactorily


covered in the New Wales Transport strategy, he considers.


This was published on 10 March, just before the election, and with the Labour party returned with a larger number of assembly members, it has presumably been fully endorsed by the current administration. When the document, entitled


Llwybr Newydd (‘New Path’) went out to consultation in October last year, RFG was highly critical and the published document confirmed its fears, as it focuses overwhelmingly on passenger transport. It ends with nine ‘action plans’, including one for rail (though almost wholly passenger rail), one on freight and logistics and another on ports and maritime. “So a rail operator to Newport Docks


would end up being covered by three different plans,” says Mr Smith. He adds: “While the report


trumpets carbon reduction through switching from car to public transport, the benefits of switching freight from road to rail are rather greater, so I think this is a missed opportunity.” In similar vein to the Burns


Commission is the report on consultation on the proposed Swansea Bay Metro, published in March, which suggests numerous new stations and freight-only lines reopened to passengers but with


little to


say about the effect on freight, which is still quite substantial in south-west Wales.


///WALES There are also similar issues


concerning the North Wales Metro plans for the Wrexham- Chester-Fflint area which proposes a high-frequency passenger service that could swallow up all the remaining capacity for freight – admittedly now at a low ebb in North Wales, although a handful of trains do operate. The lack of focus on freight is all the more frustrating, Mr Smith adds, as it comes at a time when the rail freight industry is pursuing some interesting ideas including converting old passenger stock into high- speed freight carriers, which could start to reverse decades of decline.


Currently, JP Shipping serves


the whole of the English speaking Caribbean. As well as Jamaica, it also offers weekly or fortnightly calls in the Cayman Islands, St Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat, Dominica, St Lucia, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad, Guyana and St Vincent. Business to the latter island has been busy with aid cargo and provisions in the wake of the volcano eruption. JP Shipping has offered discounts on freight to help out in the relief effort. Fruit and produce is the


the South East and Bristol, although we cover the entire UK, but there is further potential business in South Wales and the South West too that I would like to develop,” Mr Phillips explains. The future strategy will be one of growth and diversification.


in progress is to increase their airfreight forwarding services. JP Shipping’s parent company,


Jamaica Producers Group, along with Seatrade Group recently jointly acquired fellow Caribbean shipping operator Geest Line.


Local knowledge and global expertise pay off for Davies Turner


Customs knowledge has come to the fore for genuine freight forwarders since Brexit at the beginning of the year, says Edward Lucy, Davies Turner’s head of sales and development for the South West. Customers, many of whom


were also having to battle the effects of the Covid outbreak, found the need to deal with paperwork for their exports to Europe came as quite a shock when Brexit day finally dawned on 1 January. He told FBJ: “We did a lot of work beforehand, but we still had a real battle on our hands to ensure that everything was


correct. Getting our customers – and their customers in Europe – to understand what was required was our biggest challenge.” Davies Turner adopted a policy


of only collecting freight when it was sure all paperwork was in order, to avoid having goods sitting unnecessarily in its own terminals. This policy has stood it in good stead, says Edward Lucy, as freight is now flowing a lot more easily than it was at the beginning of the year and customers are gradually getting to grips with the new situation. Edward Lucy adds: “We’ve employed quite a few more


people, mainly to boost our customs capability. There are now four people in the customs team in Bristol, although they do in fact work centrally, across the whole Davies Turner group.” The road import team has also


grown from two people to seven, again mainly because of the demands of Brexit customs. As ever in the freight industry,


recruiting people isn’t easy, even though Davies Turner is happy to train the right people. Even in a maritime and commercial region like Bristol or Cardiff, awareness of freight forwarders and what they do is quite low. “To be honest,


mainstay of business in the eastbound direction – the container vessels have substantial reefer capacity - with personal effects in both directions, along with vehicles and general industrial goods moving westbound. The fruit


trade


itself has diversified away from bananas into all the other exotic fruit and spices now available on supermarket shelves.


most people in school or college aren’t thinking about becoming forwarders,” Edward Lucy says. Meanwhile, Davies Turner’s


ocean volumes in the West have rocketed, paradoxically at a time when space on vessels from the Far East has never been harder to obtain. “It’s less about what it costs and more about being able to get hold of capacity,” he says. Interestingly, it has lately been easier to get bookings from the Far East through to the port of Bristol via the Continent and feeder services than it has to major ports such as Southampton or Felixstowe. “It used to be the case that only big customers would use the services in Bristol but now smaller ones are doing so too. The lines give a better space allocation


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