UK and other European shortsea container feeder operations could soon be hit by a “capacity crunch” as fleet development fails to keep pace with changes on the deepsea shipping scene.
A senior executive at Hamburg-based Team Lines, which has a fleet of about 18 vessels connecting around 30 European ports from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, said he was concerned that deepsea vessels were getting larger while there was limited development in the size and number of feeder ships.This would put extra pressure on the vessels that were already in operation, Christian Mordhorst, Team Lines’ Chief Commercial Officer, explained.
He added that Team Lines was already discussing the issue with its clients.
He said: “We probably all need to take a bit of a longer-term view on things, because with all the big new deepsea vessels being delivered over the next couple of years, everyone will be looking to increase their market share.
“But there won’t be additional feeder vessels available for either the deepsea lines or us to greatly expand capacity."
Mordhorst added that in the past, shortsea capacity had been boosted by vessels being “cascaded down” from deepsea trades into feeder operations as they were replaced by newer, larger vessels.
But the ships of 3,000-4,000teu capacity now employed on deepsea routes were too large to be redeployed in the European shortsea feeder sector because the ports they service cannot handle them.
Also, a debate continues across the shortsea shipping industry regarding the merits of deploying larger vessels in order to obtain economies of scale versus operating smaller ships and higher-frequency sailings.
Harry Kleipas, MD of Feederlink, which operates four vessels of 400-550teu capacity, said the size of feeder vessels was, in principle, dictated by what the ports can handle.
He said: “The second thing – and this comes down to the choice of individual operators – is that the larger your feeder vessels, the shorter your sailing frequency, because the ships spend more time in port. We have opted for frequency.”
However, Søren Heegaard, UK country manager for Unifeeder, which operates more than 40 vessels of 700-1,500teu and is just taking on its largest ever vessel, of 1,800teu, argued that with a big enough fleet and network it was possible to operate both larger ships and high-frequency sailings.
via www.ifw-net.com
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