Conventional wisdom would suggest that only the largest container terminals can achieve productivity rates of more than 30 moves per crane hour, while even they require major box exchanges per ship call in order to do so. Even fairly busy import/export facilities often struggle to post anything better than 25 moves per crane hour. At the bottom end of the scale, feeder ports have traditionally struggled to maintain high productivity levels, pleading calls from small vessels generating modest box exchanges as the main mitigating factor.
“That will primarily mean Tilbury and Tilbury Container Services, ” he says. “The proximity is such that it is pretty logical to get all sorts of things brought in that way. The question will be how it is to go on from there. It would be good to see some of that go by water, although it would not be realistic to expect it all to go that way.
“We must be anticipating an increase in trade as a consequence of the Olympics and the whole Stratford area redevelopment.”
