Short-sea services can offer cost savings of up to 50%, for those willing to accept much longer transit times. But is transferring short-sea volumes to containers a way of avoiding any future Dover congestion, or is just making a bigger problem elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a surplus of port capability, with 6.9m teu of capacity across the country\u2019s container terminals not currently utilised, over a wide geographical range, which means there is ample capacity to deal with any Dover congestion after Brexit. Up to 20% of total volumes by some estimates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are currently 23 weekly box services between the UK and North Europe, 15 of which are feeder services. Assuming a 20% shift from Dover, demand would increase by around 4,800 teu a week each way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another source of container supply in North Europe is all the empty Asia import containers that could be loaded with exports to the UK, and added to the intra-Europe itineraries of deep-sea services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using just 1% of effective capacity on the Asia \u2013 Europe trade would satisfy all demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, a service calling first at Rotterdam could unload continental European imports, load exports to Asia and exports to the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Calling at a UK port next, it would discharge imports from Asia AND exports from Europe into the UK and continue to Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Merchant haulage is unable to cope with current container volumes, and the question of how it will be able to cope with a further 5k tau\u2019s a week \u2013 which could be boosted even further if the threatened DB Cargo rail strike materialises \u2013 has yet to be answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Intermodal Ship-to-Rail transfer of containerized cargos<\/a> by William Borg<\/a> is licensed under CC<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Short-sea services can offer cost savings of up to 50%, for those willing to accept much longer transit times. But is transferring short-sea volumes to containers a way of avoiding any future Dover congestion, or is just making a bigger problem elsewhere. There is a surplus of port capability, with 6.9m teu of capacity across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brexit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
![Intermodal Ship-to-Rail transfer of containerized cargos<\/a> by](\"https:\/\/www.metroshipping.co.uk\/News\/Details\/%E2%80%9Chttps:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Intermodal_ship-to-rail_transfer.JPG%22\"){kind=link}