Peel Ports Group – the second largest port group in the UK, which is developing Liverpool 2 container terminal with an investment of £300 million – is trying to grab a larger pie of India-UK containerised cargo.

A Peel Ports team, which is visiting India, plans to meet with shipping lines such as SCI, freight forwarders and cargo owners, including the Tata Group, to apprise them of the cost advantage that they would get by using the Liverpool 2 port, which is expected to be operational by 2015 and can handle large container ships.

Lower costs

As of now, despite 60 per cent of all UK trade with India being located within 240 km of Liverpool port, only five per cent of containerised trade from India goes through this port. Some 95 per cent of containerised Indian cargo reaches the UK via the Southern ports, and is then moved north by road or rail.

“The infrastructure required to handle large vessels that go from India to the UK exists only in the Southern Ports,” said Gary Hodgson, Chief Operating Officer, Peel Ports Group.

Elaborating on the cost advantage, Peter Faker, Sales Director, Containers, Peel Ports Group, said, “The drive to evaluate Liverpool 2 has to come from cargo owners. For instance, when they start coming out with their annual tenders, they could put a query on the cost involved through various route options, including one through Liverpool 2.”

Liverpool compares favourably with other ports in the UK, such as Southampton and Felixstowe, and results in an average per container saving of £60, said Faker. “When the regular liner services start calling on Liverpool, the actual benefits would be much more over time,” said Ravindra J Gandhi, Regional Director, India sub-continent, Hans Maritime Services, a firm that represents Peel Ports in India.

Cargo groups moving from India to the UK include garments routed to major retailers and construction material, such as marble and stones. Cargo movement to India from the UK includes recyclable metal, plastics and paper.

Faker said in the UK, several discount supermarkets were increasingly looking at Liverpool and were relocating their distribution centres because they had realised that the distribution network in the UK was skewed to the Northern part of the country.

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