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Dublin room expansion
Page 20
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FROM MID-OCTOBER B +I Line's freight-only service on the Dublin-Fleetwood route is to go totally ro-ro. It will replace the existing container service between Dublin and Liverpool.
Two new 6300-ton ships will operate the Dublin-Fleetwood service, each carrying 125 trailers, compared with the 94 on the one ship currently operating the route.
There will be twice-daily sailings, six days a week on the intensified route.
With the twice-daily Dublin-Liverpool and CorkPembroke car ferry services, which also carry freight, B + I will operate up to 66 ro-ro services weekly. With the twiceweekly container service from Dublin to Rotterdam, Bremen-Hamburg and Le Havre, there will be 58 sailings weekly in and out of B + I's 40-acre Dublin terminal.
Said Frank Scully, assistant chief executive: "There is enormous customer demand for ro-ro. Only five per cent of the cross-channel freight moved on wheels in 1971; by 1975 this figure had risen to 30, by 1977 to 41 and this year it is expected that half the traffic moving between Britain and Ireland will be ro-ro.
Since the introduction of the freight-only ro-ro service between Dublin and Fleetwood four years ago, carryings on this route have risen 300 per cent.
Last year B +I carried 1.4m tons of freight between Britain and Ireland.
The Dublin terminal has been extended by a further five acres at a cost of £250,000. Total cost of a second ramp with an eight-metre carriageway and necessary land work was about £650,000. And extension to a ro-ro berth comes to £150,000. Existing facilities at Fleetwood, too, are being modernised.
In Liverpool disucssions are being held with the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company over the development of a river berth for the 1980s. B + l's trailer fleet is being doubled to 2000 pieces, including 500 insulated vans, nearly 500 dry freight vans, and 1000 psk trailers.
But although it has taken on more traffic, B + I remains committed to the driver accompanied worker as well. Groupage, too, will benefit from the switch to ro-ro, with direct clearance for goods without moving them into warehouses, says the firm.