Wavertreelad
Member
- Joined
- 24 Feb 2013
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- 811
The European rotations of most container operators usually include up to four or five European ports from any of these ports, Le Havre, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bremerhaven and Hamburg plus one UK port. The operators are applying the charge on a trade by trade basis, ie Europe /Far East, Transatlantic etc. At the moment Europe /Far East services are moving towards 18000 teu vessels and potentially above, which are too big to enter USA/Canadian Ports so they route via the Suez Canal so favouring Southampton, Felixstowe and London Gateway because there is no deviation to the voyage. When the Panama Canal is enlarged, towards the end of next year it will allow vessels of up to 14000 teu to pass through it, which is why the east coast ports of the USA are gearing up to handle these larger vessels although it may be some time before able to do so because apart from the terminals themselves the approaches to the ports need to be dredged and this is handled by the US Government. The other complication is that the cargo from the Far East is generally "light", whereas US exports, particularly agricultural exports are "heavy" requiring the channels to be dredged to a greater depth which obviously costs more money and takes time.
As the ship only has to burn low sulphur fuel whilst it is within the designated low sulphur zones there were will be a cost advantage to a vessel operator calling at Liverpool from the USA/Canadian East Coast particularly if the ship maintains a voyage "north about" Ireland which in good weather can reduce the sailing time by up to 24 hours due to the shorter distance. It's therefore anticipated that Liverpool will initially target services using vessels in the 8000 to 10000 teu range which will be the mainstay of the trans Atlantic services for the next few years. Interestingly, there are however an ever increasing number of shipping lines returning to using the port although not necessarily advertising services to or from the port. These shipping lines include Maersk, and Hamburg Sud which are using the BG Freight Lines feeder service from Rotterdam, on which Evergreen also take space and who look like being joined by China Shipping whilst APL is also using the X-press line feeder from Southampton. This is all in addition to the existing main line and shipping line controlled feeder services that are now operating into the port as the volumes are gradually ramped up.
It's also interesting to observe that many shipping lines are now increasing their UK haulage tariffs, particularly on imports by anything between GBP60.00 and GBP80.00 because of the severe shortage in capacity, particularly in the southern ports for road and road/rail deliveries. Some shipping lines are unable to deliver import containers to northern England for up to a week and then bill the customer for additional storage charges, all of which ultimately will also assist Liverpool2 development.