Chunnel tariffs secret
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by Amanda Bradbury • Hauliers have attacked plans to delay publishing Channel Tunnel tariffs until this autumn.
Operator Eurotunnel says tariffs will be made public to hauliers considering opening accounts in September this year—and published the following month.
Commercial director Christopher Garnett says prices will be "very similar" to P&O and Sealink Ferries rates for next year. which have not been released yet.
Garnett says: "For business decisions, you do not need the price today.
"We don't want to negotiate rates until operators have used it, touched it and experienced it."
But Boots distribution general manager Julian Richardson is among operators saying they will not look at the tunnel option until Eurotunnel publishes tariffs. And leading transport lawyer Jonathan Lawton, who last week publicly chastised Eurotunnel for not publishing prices, says the tariffs need to be made public
But general manager of Tinnel
freight customer ied Continental Intermodal Jean le \rot says he is sympathetic to Eurotunnel: "I don't know one industry which gives prices a year before launching a new product."
Garnett says the Tunnel will "definitely" open in the earlier part of next year to freight operators. Passenger traffic will follow. About 170 of the total 220 freight wagons have been delivered and all construction on the Folkestone and Calais terminals will be completed in a month's time.
A Black Country site earmarked by British Rail as a Channel Tunnel rail freight village has been rejected because of lack of land.
Plans to create a Midlands regional freight village at the former Bescot marshalling yard on the Walsall-Sandwell border have been scuppered by an evaluation of the site which concluded there was not enough surrounding land to accommodate new industry.
Now Railfreight Distribution (RID) is spending .C4m on upgrading facilities at its 27-acre Freightliner terminal at Landor Street, Birmingham in preparation for Channel Tunnel operations early next year.