Anyone who’s driven down Kent’s M20 to Dover in the last six months will have been caught in the grips of the ‘Operation Stack’. Basically a holding pattern for road-going freight stalled at the port, Operation Stack is hugely costly for the UK freight industry, wasting over a £1m a day in late deliveries.
And, with reliability the most important factor in the delivery of goods, transport buyers are being urged to think again about alternative modes of transport.
At a recent conference hosted by Sea and Water, an independent group which champions water as an alternative way of moving freight in the UK, the message was very clear: think water.
“Timber is a good cargo for water,” said Sea and Water director Mike Elsom. “With timber, generally you are shifting large volumes over long distances. This makes water much more economical than road.”
Road freight is still by far the most common method of transport: almost two billion tonnes of freight is moved within the UK each year and, of this, 82% is transported by road with just 7% moved by water.
According to European Commission figures, the situation on Europe’s roads is unlikely to ease in the next five year. It estimates that freight will increase by around 60 billion tonnes-kilometres each year until 2010.
It’s a situation that, unless tackled, could reach crisis point. The EC’s Marco Polo initiative aims to switch 12 billion tonnes-kilometres off European roads each year until 2010. It expects water, through short-sea, coastal and inland shipping to absorb some of this shift – particularly when you consider that short-sea shipping is one of the fastest growing modes of transport.
Road congestion
“The UK has the most congested roads in Europe,” said Mr Elsom. “UK road congestion costs the economy over £20bn a year and causes at least one in nine freight deliveries to arrive late at their destinations.”
The implementation of the Working Time Directive, governing the number of hours lorry drivers can work at night, combined with a chronic shortage of new blood into the industry, also mean changes in transport modes are likely to take place.
Short-sea shipping seems an obvious alternative. Critics say delivery times by water are often too slow, a fact that Mr Elsom is ready to counter. “People are moving away from just in time deliveries to focus more on reliability,” he said. “There is a huge difference between something arriving JIT and as quickly as possible.”
He believes speed is not an issue, so long as the product arrives where and when a customer wants. “For moving timber, short-sea shipping is a viable method of transport,” he said. “People want reliability, and waterways are certainly less congested than roads. There is some issue about port congestion, but not really for timber terminals.”
Despite the dominance of roads, water is often seen as a more efficient way of moving bulk materials like timber over longer distances.
Mark Lay, managing director of Transit Medway, which ships from Scandinavia into the UK, agrees that higher costs of road transport could make water a viable alternative. “There is an increasing shortage of trucks at the bottom end of the market. Timber is very price sensitive and everybody goes for the cheapest return rate: there is a shortage of hauliers who are prepared to operate in the market in parts of the country. It’s also volume dependent and only certain volumes would make something like this work. It does happen for other commodities like engineered I-beams so there’s no reason why it couldn’t happen for timber.”
Environmental impacts
The other important consideration is environmental. “All the studies show that water is cleaner in terms of emissions, as well as other factors like noise, accidents, pollution and congestion,” said Mr Elsom. All of these factors, he maintains, are pushing the government and the EC to look at other forms of sustainable transport – and water is certainly one of them.
And timber makes an ideal cargo for water. “It is relatively high volume and reasonably low value, and generally travels long distances,” said Mr Elsom. “It can travel in bulk as well as smaller loads. The only limitations are economic ones.”
But convincing timber transport buyers that water is the way to go is not going to be easy and, without government intervention, harder still.
“We need a proper ports policy and we need to be able to expand ports where necessary,” said Mr Elsom. “We need to be able to get access to water. There is a real issue at the moment over freight handling facilities being bought and turned into houses or shopping centres. We need government policy in place to prevent that.”
