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Busiest container port in the UK
Page 53
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AROUND 2,500 lorries make for the Port of Felixstowe every working day — mainly carrying or collecting containers: it's the busiest container port in the United Kingdom.
The lorries usually get away in 30 to 40 minutes, I am told; before they have been there that long the details can be raised on a video screen and the delays investigated.
I visited the privately owned Suffolk port during the on/off docks strike, but there was no trouble there. Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company, part of the European Ferries group, which includes Townsend Thoresen, is not in the registered dock labour scheme. Newspaper reports suggested that the men can earn £24,000 a year, and this, I was told, is possible — by the most highly paid doing maximum overtime. An average wage is around £13,000.
The background to this is that last year annual container handling figures broke all records. New records were also set in roll-on/roll-off and overall tonnage throughput.
For the 12th consecutive year container figures increased; they reached 456,666 compared with the 1982 total of 427,780. Container traffic has now more than doubled since 1979.
Overall tonnage through the port also set a new record increasing by more than 800,000 tonnes to 8,530,032 tonnes from the previous year's 7,681,588 tonnes.
Ro-ro traffic rose to a total of 2,972,569 tonnes from the previous year's figure of 2,547,833 tonnes. General cargo tonnages also showed an increase from 420,689 to 439,900 tonnes However, bulk liquid throughput fell to 332,054 tonnes from the 1982 figure of 481,945 tonnes.
A total of 4,463 vessels with a gross registered tonnage of 32,1 55,669 tonnes called at Felixstowe during 1983.
"It's a blend of human, mechanical and natural resources that has seen Felixstowe emerge as the largest and most successful container port in the United Kingdom," Duncan Baker, the management team's PR man told me.
Container throughput has more than doubled in just four years. In 1983, 456,666 boxes (approximately 650,000 TEUs) passed through the port which opened the first container terminal in the UK in 1967.
Shipping companies, he said, had been quick to recognise the value of Felixstowe's geographical position. The port provides access to many of the major trade routes linking Britain with the Continent, North and Central American, North East and West Africa, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East and Far East.
Intensive investment in the latest port handling equipment has enabled Felixstowe to keep abreast of the demands of the shipping industry. In addition to three container terminals the port also has comprehensive roro and general cargo facilities permitting it to handle virtually every aspect of import and export trade, ranging from machinery and foodstuffs to timber and chemicals.
As a result tonnage through the port has grown dramatically developing from approximately half a million tonnes in 1965 to the current record total of more than eight and a half million tonnes.
More than £50 million has been invested in Felixstowe since 1976. Two more quayside container handling cranes are also on order to improve ship turn-round times still further.
Felixstowe, said Mr Baker, is the first seaport in the United Kingdom to introduce a system of computerised customs clearance.
Excellent labour relations are a vital factor in Felixstowe's expansion, which has seen the workforce employed by the port authority grow to more than 1,500 people within a port area of some 400 acres.
A private warehousing complex immediately outside the port provides well over one million cubic feet of cold storage. There is also an inland clearance deport and more than 1.5 million square feet of warehouse space, plus general warehousing.
A second Freightliner terminal was opened last year.
The rapidly expanding Felixstowe Port Consultancy Service completed port development feasibility studies in Tanjung Priok, Indonesia; Bahrain; and Auckland, New Zealand, during 1983. This year a similar contract was won in Kuwait.
The consultancy service has also worked on projects in Calcutta and Cochin, India; Mombasa, Kenya; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Geelong, Australia; Bandar Khomeini, Iran; Damman, Saudi Arabia; and Port of Spain, Trinidad. In addition, Felixstowe is also managing Fujairah — a new port in the United Arab Emirates.