Ford goes off the rails
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• British Rail has suffered another major blow to its freight business following the news that Ford is finally switching the distribution of light vehicle components between its UK assembly plants, and to and from the Continent, from rail to road (News Extra, page 18).
The switch is expected to save the company some 26 million a year in reduced inventory alone, and cut the average journey time between Ford factories in the UK and Germany by one and a half days.
During the last 12 months BR has lost the distribution business of News International, EMAP, Mirror Group Newspapers and the British Rail parts contract — together believed to be worth more than £15 million. It is not, however, revealing how much it will be losing with the ending of its Ford components distribution business.
Last week, British Rail said it was "Disappointed, but not disheartened", by Ford's decision to put its vehicle component traffic, which was previously carried in ISO containers by rail, onto the roads BR will retain its current contract for the transport of new cars and light vans from Ford factories in the UK, as well as some covered wagon movements between Ford plants in Britain.
A Ford of Britain spokesman reponed last week that BR had been "given the opportunity to improve, but we just found it more efficient to send the components by road, and efficiency is the name of the game at the moment".