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UK forwarders hit by delays in receiving containers though the port of Felixstowe have been warned that they cannot expect any compensation.
Forwarder body the British International Freight Association (BIFA) said it had held a meeting with Felixstowe owner Hutchison with the aim of recouping some of the extra costs that the congestion, following the troubled terminal operating system switch, had brought upon its members.
But Robert Keen, BIFA director general, said: “Having had a meeting with the port’s senior management, it is clear that the only companies that might receive any compensation are shipping lines.
“The port authority has made it clear to us that it does not consider BIFA members to be direct customers of the port, and would not be willing to have a discussion about possible compensation for the damage caused and the increased costs that have been incurred by those members.
“It is astonishing that a port authority, which owns the UK’s busiest container port and has been happy to market it as the ‘Port of Britain’, implemented a new and vitally important system with apparently no fall-back position if it went wrong.
“And it is very disappointing that it is not even prepared to discuss any kind of compensation for such a failure in customer service,” he said.
One forwarder told The Loadstar the delays at Felixstowe had “cost the [forwarding] industry a fortune”.
On Friday, Maersk’s intra-European subsidiary, SeaGo Line, said two sailings on its Levant Sea service and two on its Aegean service would divert to Southampton during July, but its Baltic services would continue to call at Felixstowe.
A source at the port said the new terminal operating system was “up and working and has handled over 110,000 teu since going live”.
Comment on this article
Ingvar Bergman
July 02, 2018 at 5:16 pmThe congestion in Felixstowe hit import to Scandinavia . A fresh example is goods onboard OOCL Japan scheduled to arrive June 28th to Helsingborg will now arrive July 10th – 14 days late (!) – because of a bad timing with a feeder-connection. Importers in ‘outports’ like Scandinavia and Baltic ports will face increasing problems with berthing delays in the t/s-ports and it hits them much harder than their peers on the continent because you have a feeder connection to meet. In the above case, customers and outport agents were not aware until June 26th that their goods were delayed, because the feeder could not wait.and needless to say this has far reaching implications where customers have already gone to their bankers and released Bs/L and prepared for customs clearance and trucking and in this case, goods will arrive during vacation time with further problems.
The Just-in-time shipments do not exist for Scan- and Baltic importers. Above case will have a transittime of 52 days (!) if not longer.
Gareth
July 30, 2018 at 9:25 amEven now on the 30th, the problems have not gone. We were due to have some goods arrive via OOCL Hong Kong (one of several largest ships in the world) on the 16th July. It arrived but due to delays (and perhaps inability to handle the volume of boxes on that ship), it cut and run, returning some 8 days later. When it eventually did return to Felixstowe, it only had a limited window before OOCL Indonesia arrived to take that berth. Meanwhile, Hong Kong had to anchor out at sea. A couple of days later, Indonesia also had to cut and run, failing to discharge all of her UK boxes.
While I only have one container on that boat (which may very well have cost us a £100k a year account), I know from our contact at the port that several rail operators have been running half empty because of the delays.
The ‘source’ referenced in the last paragraph is obviously talking out of their rear end.