Who's afraid of a Channel tunnel?
Page 45
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THE POSSIBILITY of a Channel tunnel clearly does not frighten Sealink and European Ferries. Sealink, now free from British Rail's financial constraints and owned by an offshoot of wealthy Sea Containers, is planning to extend Parkeston Quay by reclaiming mudflats between there and Harwich.
On the other side of the Stour-Orwell estuary, European Ferries, which owns Britain's leading container port of Felixstowe, is hard at work on developments to increase capacity by 50 per cent and has further ambitious and costly proposals that require Parliamentary approval.
This investment may well be encouraged by tear in Government circles that, even if work on a tunnel began, militants in the building industry would make it last so long that the promoters ran out of money. Without Government aid the tunnel company would then be left with the world's most expensive hole in the ground and the port operators would be laughing Force 9.