Fully charged

As Felicity Landon points out on Page 29 in ‘Defending the indefensible’, I am not alone in this incredulity, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the issue of demands for business rates, which for some companies amount to multiples of their best year’s turnover in one hit, has yet to be resolved.

It seems that we have reached a stalemate of sorts, with an attitude from on high of ‘we’ve made a mistake but we’ve set the wheels in motion, and now it’s difficult to stop’. Is that excuse enough to allow this ridiculous debacle continue? Of course not.

If it takes a change in legislation to halt the process and investigate what exactly has gone wrong, then so be it. Without labouring the point, the future of the UK’s port industry is at stake here – is that not carrot enough?

And on the subject of hidden charges, Mike King attempts to clear the murky terminal handling changes (THCs) waters on Page 26 in ‘Polarisation at ports’ now that Europe has quashed liner conferences.

Loathed by shippers as a profit-making add-on and by terminals as an uncontrollable threat to their competitiveness, lines in Europe are now free to charge shippers what they like under a terminal handling charge – which may have no direct bearing on actual terminal handling changes.

Here, transparency is the key. Shippers need to be convinced that this is a realistic fee for real services, while lines need to demonstrate to terminals that THCs are a uniform figure and not designed to give rival operations a competitive edge.

The collapse of liner conferences in Europe means that this is a critical time for THCs, and the steps that lines are taking today to restore confidence in these charges will be instrumental in the way these fees are viewed in the future.

Perhaps lines can sway terminals away from the “necessary evil” school of thought, and towards the ‘fair and just supplement’ mindset? Now there’s a challenge.