With a river frontage of over six miles, Associated British Ports‘ Port of Hull needs constant dredging and conservancy, as well as pilot boats to help guide vessels in and an army of Customs officers to keep happy. The operation is complicated enough before a ship even ties up for offloading.

Hull has always been a main port for timber importing and today over 1.2 million m³ comes in each year. Together with other wood products, such as paper, this produces 7% of the overall total for Hull, where ABP directly employs more than 250 people.

And this is only one part of the employment story; in a recent study it was found that 18,000 people derive their income from all of the activities associated with the port, giving some idea of the scale of the operation. The main docks – King George, Queen Elizabeth and the Alexandra – are grouped together and timber imports come in at all three.

Meeting point

ABP was privatised in 1983 and is one of the top 200 listed UK companies. It owns and operates the mass of infrastructure that supports all of the loading and discharging at each port, generating its income by acting as the meeting point between sea and land.

The shipping companies, operating regular liner services or possibly one-off arrivals, pay ABP for ships’ dues, which are similar to a parking fee, as well as wharfage (levied against goods, to cover the cost of cranes, sheds, quays and roadways). There is also a piloting and conservancy charge to maintain all of the services that get the vessel into port (there are over 150 pilots working around the clock).

Once this is settled it leaves the costs of unloading, storage handling and onward delivery. This comes under the stevedoring companies, which operate on the site as independent businesses. Over the years the stevedores have specialised on certain products, such as timber, coal, fish or steel and it is important to work with a stevedoring company that is experienced in timber handling. There are many stevedoring companies at Hull and Peter Goddard of Northern Cargo Services (NCS) showed me around all of the areas in which they are involved.

NCS, which employs 135 and handles over 50% of the timber arriving at Hull, works closely with various shipping lines, including Ahlmark and ASSCO/ESF at the King George dock, Baltic Forest Lines and Scaninge at the Alexandra and Finncarrier through the massive Finland terminal on the Queen Elizabeth dock.

Things have changed at the port in the past few decades.

Improved handling

To give some idea of the improvements in handling and vessel capacity, in the early 1960s a 2,000m³ vessel would be unloaded by hand in 7-10 days, probably using 42 men, split into three gangs of 14. Today, those same three gangs will clear a 6,000m³ vessel in a single day. The cost savings are enormous, but the investment in handling and training, as well as packaging and ship design, have also been significant.

We began our tour of the NCS operations by visiting the huge group of sheds around the King George docks that the company operates for Ahlmark, which runs a regular liner service from Sweden with three vessels each week, bringing in a wide variety of softwoods. Everything is under cover, including reloading for goods going to their final destinations and this ensures bright, clean material. There is more than 30,000m² of covered space and even then it can become tight if customers do not clear the goods promptly. Peter pointed out that this is a particular problem as shippers bring stock in ahead of the summer shutdown. The ASSCO/ESF container service from St Petersburg is also handled through this dock.

At the Alexandra dock a vessel was discharging timber from Sweden for Scaninge. The dock does not have the same level of covered space as it is geared up for Baltic material and carcassing.

It was fascinating to see the speed of discharge, with cranes swinging up to four packs at a time onto the quayside, where the foreman was checking against the manifest. The gangs work from 8am until 6.30pm every day and as they stopped for lunch we went back to the office to see how the goods are signed off.

Each pack needs to be registered for its storage point and then booked out for final delivery – any errors could be very expensive, so experienced handlers, with accurate stock recording systems are vital. The shipping clerk’s office at NCS is always a hive of activity; manifests are keyed into the system and handed to the gang foremen, who check them off as goods are unloaded. Any shortages or damage have to be noted and issued to the ship’s agent.

Unloading delays

To help improve the cargo checking and identity, shippers should look for a clear bill of lading in good size lettering on each pack and well-packaged, pre-strapped material. There are often 1,000 packs on a vessel and if they’re badly marked this can create delays in unloading and clearing. When packs ‘roll’ or break, this is often caused by poor packaging and again this can cause delays.

The cost of discharging is based on cubic metreage for timber and tonnage for sheet materials, but premiums can be caused by the type of vessel or unslung packs. Some of the older vessels still seen in ports are not box hold types and this means that packs have to be manoeuvred out from under the edges of the deck, whereas a modern box hold is far easier to discharge. By pre-slinging material, huge savings in labour on this side of the operation can be made.

Our final part of the visit was to the Finland terminal, which provides a glimpse of how timber forwarding will be arranged in the future.

Queen Elizabeth Dock

At the huge storage complex on the Queen Elizabeth dock, Finncarrier, using two specially built liners, runs a weekly service from Finland for UPM-Kymmene and Forest Alliance, shipping a mixture of paper, timber and sheet materials. NCS deals with all the stevedoring.

The leap forward in technology at this terminal compared with the others is significant. Much of it has been driven by the need to reduce costs, as timber and paper prices remain static, leaving handling as one of the few areas where savings can be made.

Using real time computer systems, all data is sent back to the mills so that as stock is moved, they can update production requirements, right back to the forest. The old manual manifest paperwork has been cleared out and NCS updates information by hand-held readers. On paper coils this is done by bar codes. Timber packs are keyed in manually but it is only a matter of time before they use the same system.

The Finland terminal has the equivalent area of seven football pitches under cover and every part is scrupulously clean.

During the past 12 months, the new systems at the terminal have cut stock discrepancies to less than 0.1% and some of this tiny error could have been caused during loading or transhipment.

As we finished our tour of this incredible operation, I was struck by the immensity of UK timber importing operations. Week in, week out a mass of timber products is arriving, being unloaded, checked and redistributed, and not just at Hull, but at Garston, Goole, Grimsby, Lowestoft, Newport, Tilbury, the Medway, Plymouth.