Thursday 28th February 2008 ~ THE PORT OF FELIXSTOWE

Paul Davey ~ summarised by Stephen Marginson

Appeared in Journal 519

A full turn out welcomed Paul Davey from the Port of Felixstowe for an illustrated lecture about the Port. Paul started by going through the various owners of the Port to its present Hong Kong based owners Hutchinson Whampoa Ltd. Hutchinson have interest in ports, property and telecommunication, the biggest of the latter being the Orange network, which was built up and then sold on at a large profit in 2004. Their port interests stretch to 59 terminal scattered mainly across Europe and Asia. All are container ports with a total of 247 berths handling 59 million containers per year. Their geographical spread is based around the main trade routes between Asia and Europe. The North American market has not been invested in due to US restrictions on ownership by China based companies. South America and Africa are being looked at as container transportation expands rapidly in these areas.

In the UK Hutchinson own Felixstowe, Thamesport (on the Medway, not Thames!!) and Harwich International Port. About 4 million containers are handled at these terminals each year accounting for about forty per cent of UK containers. The numbers are low in comparison to the likes of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg, which handle over 7 million containers each year, and well below the 10 million plus handled by ports in Asia such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Yantian. The trades from China dominate the business at Felixstowe as they do many other ports with large volumes of manufactured goods being imported covering every conceivable type of merchandise that one buys in the shops.

There are constraints at Felixstowe caused by the limited numbers of berths for the latest generation of container ships, which are all handled at three berths on the Trinity terminal. Felixstowe is unable to expand up river anymore with the three extensions of the Trinity terminal completing this phase of development. The next development will be Landguard south where the work is waiting to start due to it being based on whether the rail infrastructure improvement goes ahead. These are awaiting the approval by the minister. This will add three more deep-water berths for the latest generation of vessels, which will be developed in two phases. More developments are possible at Bathside Bay over at Harwich with a new 5-berth container terminal having received planning permission. This is unlikely to go ahead until 2010, it being dependant on container trade growth, economic growth and port competition from the new development on the Thames by Dubai Ports

Paul answered questions from the floor after giving us a very good insight into the current activities and future plans of Hutchinson Whampoa. Little did he know that when he described the Landguard cranes as approaching the end of their working life that two of them would be wiped out 36 hours later when hit by a ship carrying the new cranes for Trinity Terminal. May be Landguard 2 will now happen that little bit quicker.

Front Cover. From Sunday 16th March, Ipswich Buses service 6 was diverted to run into the hospital grounds to the newly installed bus stops outside the Garrett Anderson Centre. The photo captures Dart 136 operating the 10.21 service from the hospital on the first day. Photo by Stuart Ray.

Rear Cover Top. Beeston's N597 BRH in Crown Street lay-by on 21st January after repainting from Fingland's livery. Photo by Ivan Watts.

Rear Cover Bottom. Network Colchester's T133 AUA at the Old Cattle Market bus station on 18th February. Photo by Ivan Watts.