Rescue bid for Charterail
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• The fate of the troubled road/rail company Charterail should be decided within days — determining whether the 2,000 tonnes a night it carried will be permanently transferred to road.
The company's directors are fighting to organise a rescue package which could involve the stake of British Rail being reduced and replaced with new investors (CM 3-9 Sept).
British Rail has defended its role in the collapse of Charterail, the joint venture company set up two years ago to encourage more freight on to rail.
BR chairman Sir Bob Reid told last week's Freightconnection 92 conference in Birmingham that the business had been caught in the middle of recession. "As far as I can see, volumes did not materialise," he said. "If customers have not got the volumes to move, neither the Department of Trade and Industry nor ourselves can produce trade if it is not there."
BR, which had a 22% stake in the company, refused to agree a refinancing deal and reduce locomotion costs to allow Charterail to compete against recession-hit road haulage rates.
Sir Bob said Charterail had entered into the contract with BR in the full knowledge of what BR's pricing system would be.
But Sir Alastair Morton, group chief executive of Eurotunnel, told the conference that Eurotunnel was facing the same difficulties as Charterail. "They are the difficulties of using private capital to build a new type of public service." He said governments "must keep their bargains with private investors".
Sir Alastair denied that Eurotunnel's freight rates will necessarily be higher than short sea ferry rates. "We would like to get a premium for speed and convenience but we will have to prove the service," he said.