Capacity dilemma as container traffic expands

Britain’s container ports are running out of capacity, with potentially serious implications for business costs, the government is being warned by shipping lines and port operators.
The crisis poses serious questions for ministers, who say that increasing capacity is in the national interest, but have refused to produce a national ports strategy that could arbitrate between competing projects.
The result, say environmental groups, is that Britain could swing from a shortage to an excess of capacity over the next 15 years, damaging sensitive coastal sites in the process.
No one disputes that container traffic is growing rapidly. The number of 20ft equivalent (TEU) boxes, the standard industry measure, increased by an average of 5.4 per cent between 1990 and 2001. The increase is driven by rising world trade, greater use of global production methods, and the growing range of goods that can be shifted in boxes, such as cars and refrigerated goods. As volumes grow, ships become bigger, restricting the range of ports at which they can call. The biggest currently in use carry nearly 8,000 TEUs and have a draft of up to 14.5 metres, but ships carrying 12,500 boxes are on the drawing board.
There is also little dispute about the forecasts for growth in container traffic over the 13 years to 2015, which range from about 4.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent.
Stephen Bracewell, UK operations manager for Maersk Sealand, one of the biggest container ship operators, says the UK is already short of capacity for big container ships because ports cannot operate at 100 per cent efficiency. “The clock is ticking,” Mr Bracewell warned a conference on port development organised by the transport department.
Ted Wang, managing director of the OOCL shipping line in Europe, says there is sufficient capacity for the time being, but new infrastructure needs to be approved quickly.
If nothing is done, say the shipping lines, freight will start to pile up on quays because of congestion, and more may have to be trans- shipped via the continent, using small “feeder” ships, which add to costs.