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BR will not cut North Sea rates
Page 42
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• Allegations that British Railways was undercutting rates to capture container traffic were denied this week at the inauguration of a new high-capacity sea container service at Harwich. Mr. Jan Posner said that the rates neither had been nor would be cut. The new low rates now in operation were being achieved through efficient service and the use of cellular ships, as opposed to rollon/roll-off ferries it was contended.
Typical rates quoted by British Railways for a 20ft container are: Stratford to Zee brugge, £34; Harwich to Zeebrugge (quay to quay), £25; Birmingham to Frankfurt, £70. This last rate applied to customers offering a "reasonable" traffic, said Mr. Posner. This was later defined as a customer who uses 150 containers 30 times a year—the equivalent of 4,500 trips a year.
The new service is designed principally to link BR Freightliner services with Europe and it is forecast that there will be seven Freightliner services running to Harwich each day by 1969. These are: Stratford LIFT (two), Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh with north-east England included. The containers being carried are all privately owned as the majority of BR Freightliner containers do not conform to ISO standards and are consequently unsuitable for European transit.
Road traffic will not be excluded from the new service and private operators can by arrangement discharge or collect containers at the ship side. Railborne containers are conveyed to and from the ship and the railsiding by a fleet of Bedford TK tractive units coupled to HWP semi-trailers. There is quay storage for 250 containers stacked in two tiers: this is 30 more than the capacity of one cellular ship.