EU - Transport Policy

Written evidence from International Container Hubs Ltd (EU 27)

Select Committee’s European Ports Review: briefing note on the North European Off-shore Container Transhipment Hub, Scapa Flow, Orkney

Thank you for the opportunity to provide a further brief on the Hub project, this in preparation for your and the Select Committee’s tour of European ports. We are grateful for past occasions and for the interest and support of the Orkney Islands Council and of the Scottish Government.

1. BACKGROUND

2. The bulk of world trade, Britain’s commercial survival and the UK’s long-term economic success depends on containerised transportation.

3. Transport by sea is an order of magnitude cheaper and less polluting than road or rail.

4. Competition in global markets enhances the advantage of the economies of scale. For the UK, North Europe and for Russia West of the Urals’ trade this means the largest feasible containerships providing the cheapest and most efficient services between North-West Europe and the rest of the World.

5. All the major shipping lines recognise this & are operating or introducing mega-ships of >12,500teu capacity, with <18,000teu designs under active consideration. While this is very much in North Europe’s interest, several basic problems have to be overcome if North European economies are to derive full benefit from these developments. These problems include

6. (i) Europe’s taxpayers have and are being exploited to shore up the present mediaeval series of shallow, riverine, city centre ports that stretch from 100km up the Elbe to the Seine estuary.

7. (ii) European and state subsidies have suppressed local ports and local economies, to provide life-support for archaic ports that should long ago have been supplanted by a port system that provides maximal intercontinental efficiency with the furthest extention of seaborne services for producers, customers and markets alike.

8. (iii) The present concentration on a few shallow congested ports involves the unnecessary expense of continuous dredging and the constriction of North European trade through a handful of choke points, while leaving most of the European transport network underused and Britain out on a limb.

9. (iv) The layout of riverside ports ensures that megaships are handled with the maximum inefficiency – working only one side of the ship and only alternate container bays at any one time. That is at <25% of the rate of container handling available with the ScapaSystem© method invented for the Scapa Flow Hub and available for introduction elsewhere.

10. (v) Megaships provide cheapest transportation or maximum profitability or both if operated efficiently. This requires keeping them on the ocean and fully loaded. Not, as at present, wasting a week or more tramping around North Europe’s shallow ports seeking part loads.

11. (vi) To compete globally, the UK, North Europe and Russia need the ability to concentrate full loads (<18,000teu) and to turn-round megaships in <24-hours. That is, unloading 18,000teus and loading 18,000teus, 36,000teu movements per megaship per day. At the same time assembling these loads from and dispatching them to every port, great and small in Britain, North Europe and the Baltic, by a network of short-sea fast feeder services. In effect applying the Hub and Spoke principle to North Europe’s intercontinental maritime services.

12. (vii) Maximal economy and environmental efficiency in containership design requires the ability to increase draught. This is denied by a need to access North Europe’s shallow ports. The true expense of current European port policy is sub-optimal ship design, congestion, suppression of local economies and unnecessary dredging, the cost of which is hidden by subsidy that itself places a further unnecessary tax-burden on British and European industry. Adding to their expenses & further degrading their competitiveness.

13. FUTURE NORTH EUROPEAN PORT DEVELOPMENT.

14. Off-shore inter-continental container transhipment addresses all these problems. Scapa Flow’s naturally deep water, space, security, ideal harbour and strategic location provides the situation where these requirements can be satisfied successfully.

15. At a time when Britain and the European economies can no longer afford the burden of un-necessary, counter-productive and self-defeating taxation, the Scapa Flow Hub is being developed by global capital that believes in Britain and Europe’s ability to regenerate our ports system and economies in a manner that will enable us to compete successfully on level terms, without self-imposed encumbrance in the global market place.

16. The Scapa Flow Hub will allow optimal containership design, most economical capacity and operation at the greatest environmental efficiency. While enabling current ports to survive and prosper, it will regenerate Britain, North Europe and the Baltic’s local ports along with their local economies. It will free-up Europe’s transportation choke-points and enable the United Kingdom to develop the ‘All-Electric Britain’ transportation system with which Britain can not only survive but will thrive After Oil.

March 2011