News / Hauliers add surcharge for collections from congested London Gateway

Photo: DP World

Container haulage firms serving London Gateway in the UK have begun to introduce a £150 surcharge for collecting imports, due to gate delays which have marred operations at the port for the past couple of weeks.

UK-based freight forwarder Davies Turner reported that some hauliers were waiting five hours or more to collect boxes from the port, and warned shippers this would give them the right to impose port-specific surcharges

“These disruptions are significantly impacting vehicle revenues, as drivers are frequently losing valuable time at the port, missing follow-up jobs, and facing difficulties in securing daily reloads.

“Hauliers have informed us about the introduction, or proposed introduction, of a Gateway surcharge to help address these challenges,” Davies Turner told customers.

Meanwhile, London Gateway port owner and operator DP World said it was suspending its peak charges on its vehicle booking system for the first half of July as a “gesture of goodwill”.

A London Gateway advisory added that “VBS tolerances are being extended to keep appointments live, and to keep the terminal as safe as possible we have introduced traffic flow diversions to manage truck volumes inside the terminal”.

The Loadstar understands from sources that congestion began to mount at London Gateway’s landside operations following the introduction of the Gemini Cooperation’s deepsea services after the alliance switchover this year, the new volumes resulting in a surge of demand for intermodal capacity into the UK hinterland. This had the knock-on effect of creating greater demand for haulage from the port, pushing its truck handling capacity.

However, according to port sources, a power outage at an external plant on 26 June exacerbated the issue by knocking out some of the terminal’s automatic stacking cranes (ASCs), which subsequently needed to be recalibrated.

“We’ve never had an outage before, but that has been repaired,” the source said, adding: “There is no congestion at the berths, and the landside operations are back to normal.”

Capacity provided to shippers and forwarders by carriers at the port has increased by nearly 50% year on year, according to the eeSea liner database: in June 2024, total pro forma liner capacity serving London Gateway was 785,000 teu for the month, while this June that had grown to 1.12m teu.

However, due to more than 30 port call omissions, the actual capacity last month was 823,000 teu.

According to eeSea head of operations and forecasting Destine Ozuygur, London Gateway has seen a higher level of port call omissions than its peers.

“The port’s total capacity loss directly tied to omissions amounted to a staggering 738,000 teu in Q2 alone, which means an absolute loss of 603,000 teu, if ‘gains’ such as inducement calls and delayed arrivals from preceding months are taken into account.

“By comparison, Antwerp witnessed just 277,000 teu of omission-related capacity loss and 70,000 teu of absolute loss, despite headline-worthy congestion caused by recent strikes, ongoing construction, and major barge delays,” she said.

As a result, a number of carriers have switched their London Gateway call to Southampton – also operated by DP World – or Felixstowe in an effort to bypass the congestion.

Chief among these is Gemini’s transatlantic TA5 service, which switched its UK call to Felixstowe in late May, while the Europe-east coast South America Neo Samba/Safran1 service, jointly operated by Maersk and CMA CGM, has switched to Southampton, which is expected to continue until the end of the month.

However, Ms Ozuygur also noted that at London there had been “a recent improvement in both average arrival delays and on-time-performance, demonstrating that congestion does not necessitate a 1:1 relationship with other port performance metrics,” she said.

eeSea data shows average vessel on-time performance of 38% in May rose to 52% in June – meaning that the average delay had dropped from three days to two, and were “the healthiest stats the port has seen since August 2024″.

“These omissions and more permanent long-term schedule adjustments may, in fact, prove to be a necessary boon in remedying London Gateway’s reliability in the months ahead, while construction for terminal expansion is under way,” she added.