Fanfare and flourish as London Gateway welcomes its first commercial caller

While the first commercial call of a containership at London Gateway was certainly accompanied by the requisite fanfare – top executives from port owner DP World and shipping line MOL flew in for the occasion, accompanied by a marching band – the port’s team sought to downplay suggestions that the facility was now ready to begin competing for a place on the world’s largest shipping strings.

“We have built London Gateway to handle the largest ships in the world, but we also have to be realistic that we are going to add capacity in phases and we are at the moment a one-berth operation – we can handle any size ship, but only one at a time,” London Gateway chief executive Simon Moore told The Loadstar.

“This is not the formal opening of the port – that is expected to be in March or April next year,” He added.

The terminal’s second berth is scheduled to begin operations next year.

The location and construction of London Gateway, along with the design of the terminal and its investment in hinterland links, was predicated on serving the Asia-Europe trade, acting as a key node in container supply chains that deliver Asia-produced goods to the UK consumer, of which a significant proportion – and certainly the wealthiest and most consumerist – are based in London and south-east England.

However, The fact that it its first service was a north-south string that specialises in transporting perishable products and wine from South Africa to northern Europe does not really fit with this narrative.

Indeed, It is ironic that, given London Gateway’s slogan is “ship closer; save money”, in an obvious bid to win traffic from shippers targeting London and the affluent south-east, the first service it won actually sees ships diverting from the previous port, Tilbury and its rebranded London Container Terminal, which is technically nearer to this particular end market, and had already carved out a niche for itself as a port that specialised in fresh produce cargoes.

“The first thing to say is that Tilbury was a doing a very good job for us. This move in no way reflects on its operations,” a senior MOL executive told The Loadstar, “But the fact is that the if you look at the scale of the development here at Gateway, it is clearly going to be a very big thing and we wanted to be part of it right from the beginning. The SAECs service is going be seeing much larger vessels coming early next year and so the room for development at Tilbury was always going to be limited.”

Berthing SAECs vessels remains tide-dependent at Tilbury, while Mr Moore claimed that the berthing of the 4,900teu MOL Caledon on Wednesday evening was at one of the Thames tide’s lowest points. “This was the first time this vessel could be berthed on the Thames independent of where the tide was,” Mr Moore.

The Southern Africa Express Container Service (SAECS) is operated by a consortium comprising MOL, Deutsche Afrika-Linien (DAL) and Maersk, along with its subsidiary Safmarine, and was recently reshuffled. This has involved it being merged with Maersk’s Med Shuttle/225 service, on which MOL and DAL bought slots, and integrated to include a call at the Spanish transhipment hub of Algeciras, replacing a previous transhipment call at the Canaries hub of Las Palmas.

“Algeciras is already a very big Asia-Europe port, so the opportunity for Asian cargo coming here has been created,” said Mr Moore.

The new port has already handled one Asia-Europe vessel of course, when the distressed 10,000teu Zim Rotterdam arrived in September after being refused a berth at Felixstowe following a fire in its hold – incidentally, according to London Gateway officials, the fire appears to have been caused by a container loaded with shisha pipe charcoals that had not been declared as dangerous goods.

However, the 3,000-plus boxes that were unloaded from Zim Rotterdamat London Gateway did not move onto their hinterland destinations without incident, as the sudden arrival of those boxes caused serious congestion for a number of days.

Because of the fire, customs had a requirement to scan every box leaving the port,  despite the fact that the permanent radiation scanners had yet to be installed, and neither were the roads fully built – which in combination meant the containers had to do a number shunts around the terminal before customs would agree to release them to waiting hauliers.

Some hauliers complained of waits of up to eight hours, and some even went as far as to refuse picking up boxes at the terminal altogether, but Mr Moore defended the terminal’s handling of the ship.

“We were very honest with ourselves – we weren’t open; we had no roads; customs wasn’t set up; we weren’t a live port. We gave ourselves eight hours to decide whether we could take the call and came to the conclusions that we could have no better training exercise,” he said.

Another port executive told The Loadstar: “It’s all very well people complaining about having to wait for their boxes, but if we hadn’t accepted the vessel, those boxes would probably now be sitting on a terminal somewhere in Europe.”

In contrast, the handing of the 500 boxes exchanged on the MOL Caledon passed without hiccup – indeed, some shipping executives noted that by launching operations with a weekly call from smaller vessels has given London Gateway an opportunity to ramp up its operations rather than run at full speed from what amounts to a standing start.

European dockers’ unions are showing support for ITF affiliate Unite, as they continue their campaign for trade union rights at London Gateway, which has officially opened for business this week.

The first vessel, MOL Caledon, docked at the new DPW operated terminal on Wednesday night (5 November) to be met by a demonstration.  A Unite delegation went on to meet the vessel at its next port of call in Rotterdam, where further actions were staged with the backing of the local union, FNV Bondgenoten. 

On Tuesday, 30 representatives from EU dockers’ unions affiliated to the ETF (European Transport Workers’ Union) the European arm of the ITF,  and the International Dockworkers’ Council, met at the Unite offices in London and released a statement pledging support. The statement reads: “The meeting agreed that the behaviour exhibited by DP World at London Gateway was symptomatic of a wider attack on trade unions in the European ports sector. The meeting resolved to coordinate support for UNITE the Union by all lawful means to achieve its legitimate demands for union recognition at London Gateway and to ensure that DPW London Gateway re-commits to the process of negotiation with UNITE to allow a timetable to be developed jointly which covers union access and company neutrality.”

Practical support from other European unions has also been secured with various actions expected over the coming weeks at ports receiving vessels from London Gateway.

Update:

Check out pictures from Rotterdam showing the arrival of the MOL Caledon on our Flickr subset

You can also watch an interview with one of the Unite delegates and Nick Stam, National Secretary of FNV Ports, on our Youtube channel

Find out more about the Unite 4 Gateway campaign by liking their Facebook page - and stay up to date with new developments.

Gateway campaign goes international

13 November 2013

The opening of London Gateway in early November marked a step up in Unite’s campaign for recognition by the port’s owner, Dubai Ports World (DPW). 

The first vessel to dock at the new container port, the MOL Caledon has been getting a special welcome at subsequent ports thanks to dockers’ unions around Europe. The campaign also picketed the London office of Maersk, one of the partners in the SAECS consortium, which owns the ship. 

“In Rotterdam, the vessel’s next port-of-call, the MOL Caledon has been the target of solidarity action by the Dutch dockers’ union, joined by a Unite delegation,” said Unite regional officer Jane Jeffery. “We have been also talking to other dockworkers’ unions in Bremerhaven, Germany and Algeciras, Spain to coordinate action. 

“Dockworkers around the world are campaigning against ports like London Gateway which the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has called ‘a port of convenience’,” said Jane Jeffery.  The ITF is concerned that London Gateway and other ports of convenience drive down labour and safety standards, powering a race to the bottom as ports try to cut costs to win business. 

Unite hosted a meeting of 30 representatives from European dockers’ unions this month. They resolved to coordinate international support for the campaign for recognition at London Gateway and for dockworkers worldwide.     

Dockers in Southampton and other ports around the world from Australia to Peru mounted demonstrations against the anti-union practices of London Gateway operator, DPW, in October.            

Unite continues its campaign - now in its 23rd week - with demonstrations at the Essex port and businesses in London which associate themselves with DPW and its directors. 

Take action Contact the Unite 4 Gateway campaign team:
Email Jane Jeffery or Paul Constable for details of demonstrations.

Info: Follow @Unite4Gateway on Twitter
‘Like’ the Unite4Gateway Facebook group