PEEL PORTS: In a presentation to British parliamentarians, Peel Ports has made the case for its new £350m (US$550m) Liverpool2 container terminal which is scheduled to open in December 2015.
The company’s chief operating officer Gary Hodgson pointed out that 65% of the population of the United Kingdom and Ireland lives within 150 miles of Liverpool in the North-West of England.
However, the British Isles’ three biggest container ports are all in the South-East of England: Felixstowe, Southampton and Tilbury.
This costs shippers greatly, Hodgson said, as the costs of inland transportation are so expensive when compared to shipping. For example, he said, it is cheaper to take a container from Shanghai to Felixstowe than from Felixstowe to Manchester.
Therefore, the company is hoping that its new deepwater terminal, which will be able to handle ships of up to 13,500 teu, will attract customers as it is closer to consumers.
When asked by CM whether shipping lines will be able to deviate so far from their route from Asia through the English channel to Northern Europe, Hodgson said that shippers would persuade shipping lines to do it.
He said: “If you look just purely from a shipping line’s perspective, you would say: “Why would I want to divert? I want to go to one of the ports in the South-East and then nip to Rotterdam, maybe Bremerhaven, and then go back home.’ However, we see shipping lines as being a little bit more intelligent than that.”
“One guy funds the whole logistics chain and that’s the cargo owner,” he added, “if he wants a container to go from Asia to Manchester, he can save probably more than the sea-leg costs at the moment by finding an alternative port of entry. Therefore we believe that shipping lines will be able to charge an additional premium for going to Liverpool.”
The chief executive of the Port of Dover Tim Waggot, who was also present, said that Dover’s proximity to the English Channel, the second busiest shipping channel in the world, is a great opportunity for its Western Docks revival project to attract container traffic.
The comments were made at the first meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ports and Maritime in the Houses of Parliament. Industry sources at the event said that Liverpool2 would attract Transatlantic trade but were generally highly sceptical of its ability to attract any Europe-Asia trade.
Labour member of parliament Jim Fitzpatrick and a non party-affiliated member of the House of Lords, Lord Greenway, were elected co-chairs of the new group.
