More bridges at sea
The fallout has triggered structural changes for traffic between the United Kingdom and the countries in the EU. New partnerships are further driving the expansion of shortsea shipping links, with Unifeeder, P & O Ferries and A2B-online all in the thick of it.
Now that Brexit has been completed we can establish that connections between the United Kingdom and Europe are being reordered. The Irish Sea resembles something of a free-for-all.
The Belgium-based freight forwarder Transuniverse offers an example of the structural changes the overall situation is subject to. The chair of its board, Frank Adins, said recently that “the United Kingdom is one of our core markets. Up until now we collaborated with a series of local partners in the south of the country and in greater London. They looked after distribution. Now Brexit has fundamentally changed the situation. Local players with modest warehousing and limited handling capacities can’t manage – or hardly manage – the new customs requirements.” The solution? Transuniverse has teamed up with the road division of the logistics provider Europa Worldwide in Dartford for groupage traffic.
Major networks are in particularly strong demand. This is partially because a grace period of 175 days, conceded by the British government, in which firms can hand in late their customs declarations for imports into the UK, expires on 25 June.
Maritime networks becoming denser
Importers’ and exporters’ activities are becoming increasingly noticeable in the Irish Sea. One indicator thereof is a new container connection from Southampton serving the port of Cork. The shortsea operator Unifeeder started the link to and from the ports of Cork, Belfast and Dublin via the hub of Southampton.
Other players are also already fortifying their existing connections. P & O Ferries now has a second vessel on the Zeebrugge–Hull route, deploying the Freya on the North Sea lo-lo link. Together with its sister ship, the Elisabeth, the 117 m containership with the capacity to carry 650 teu will double P & O Ferries’ total capacities on the route. The line will simultaneously up the number of sailings there to six per week and direction. P & O Freight Ferries Services managing director Thorsten Runge said that growing goods flows between the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe have underpinned the expansion.
The Dutch shortsea shipping line A2B-online has also augmented a service of late. It recently added a fourth weekly sailing to its connection between London Thamesport and the Dutch port of Moerdijk. The shipping line will now deploy the A2B Comfort on the route, which is one of the six 508 teu containerships the enterprise operates in the North Sea.
Bart van ’t Hof, the group’s sales director, has also observed an ongoing upswing. “We’ve noticed a rise in volumes occurring as a result of Brexit-induced shifts in traffic routes. On top of this various industries are really taking off now, after the Covid-19 downturn. With this additional vessel we can spread the rise in volumes uniformly across the entire week.”
The fact is that links between the UK, the Benelux countries, France and Germany are flying high – despite an overall decline in trade volumes and the fact that 30% of shippers have complained about logistics problems since Brexit. P & O Ferries’ vessels.
