Larger containerships, bigger carrier alliances such as the P3 vessel-sharing alliance between Maersk Line, MSC and CMA CGM, DP World's new London Gateway terminal and greater focus on hinterland connections will reshape the nation's ports in the south of England for years to come.
Hutchison-controlled London Thamesport container terminal looks set to lose all of its deepsea services, after Hapag-Lloyd, OOCL and NYK announced that they plan to switch their transatlantic services to Southampton. Evergreen has also recently consolidated its UK cargo volume at the port of Felixstowe, reports Drewry Maritime Research.
It said that despite Thamesport being a modern, well equipped and well managed terminal, throughput has plunged from a peak of 800,000 TEU in 2008 to 300,000 TEU in 2012.
One of the factors to account for the dramatic decline is the rapid deployment of mega-sized vessels, which Thamesport cannot handle given the draft restrictions in the River Medway approach channel. In February 2013 the G6 Alliance moved the Thamesport call on its Asia-Europe Loop 5 to Southampton after replacing 9,000 TEU ships with 13,000 TEU vessels.
Evergreen's decision to move cargo handling to Felixstowe was reportedly due to greater cooperation with the CKYH Alliance on Asia-Europe strings - itself brought about by vessel upsizing.
Despite Thamesport being excluded from the Asia-Europe services that are deploying the world's biggest ships, the port could still be a call on transatlantic and north-south trade lanes as they use smaller vessels.
Nearby Tilbury is also losing ground to rivals. Member shipping lines of the Southern Africa Europe Container Service (SAECS) consortium has announced it will move to the new London Gateway terminal when it opens later this year.
On a brighter note, Tilbury has an effective competitive niche in north-south and reefer trades. The annual SAECS volume of around 65,000 TEU is also modest compared to the London Gateway's 1.6 million TEU annual capacity in the first phase of development.
The authors of the report believe that recent events affecting Thamesport and Tilbury are just the beginning of further port call shake-ups. For these two ports the future focus is expected to be head-to-head competition for niche deepsea services as well as short sea intra-European services.
For Felixstowe and Southampton, the existing deep sea Far East-North Europe players, the impact is yet to be felt - not only from London Gateway, which will attempt to take Asia-Europe services away from them, but also from bigger ships and alliance changes.
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