Freightliner delay puts sale in doubt
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by Karen Miles
• Road hauliers look set to escape a major shake-up in the container carrying market.
This week it emerged that plans to privatise the sector's largest carrier, British Rail's Freightliner, could fail completely.
The prospect of Freightliner remaining in state ownership surfaced last week as BR announced another delay of up to a year in the planned sell-off of the 500,000container-a-year rail and road operator.
And as BR gave its reasons for the latest hold-up, shipping lines claimed that uncertainty over Freightliner's future is making it unable to compete properly. They claim the road haulage industry will be the major beneficiary.
The sale delay, which BR says could last another year, came as a shock to Freightliner's three bidders which had been expecting to hear who would take over the operation. But the hold-up could be fatal if, as some commentators predict, Labour wins an early general election and cancels the whole sale.
Labour, which expects an election some time this year, says if voted in, it will stop rail privatisation and develop Freightliner in the public sector. It says that if Freightliner is already sold off it will not renationalise the business.
But shipping line Hapag-Lloyd says whatever the long-term political implications, the failure to privatise Freightliner this year will mean that shipping lines, such as itself, will continue to send only 11-12% of its containers by rail in 1995.
Hapag-Lloyd transport director Keith Duggan says if BR fails to sell by the summer the same proportion of HapagLloyds's 120,000 containers a year will continue to travel by road in 1996.
"The more it is delayed the less chance there is of moving to rail," says Duggan. "A private rail operator could have taken a lot from road."
BR says Freightliner, which made a loss of 1:38 million on a £78m turnover in 1992/3, is to be set up as a separate company from Railfreight Distribution. For the first time locomotives will be included in the sale. They will be included to the asset list of 223 tractive units and 548 trailers, eight inland terminals and 1,100 rail wagons. Freightliner currently employs around 2,000 staff.