CONTAINER & CARGO HANDLING

Tractors to stand idle as market plummets

18 years ago

Whilecurrent orderbooks will keep suppliers busy with deliveries until aboutAugust next year, the irony is that ports may be wondering what to dowith their new machines when containership operators begin to lay uptheir vessels and the flow of containership traffic retracts.

Maersk has already mooted that it is very likely to lay vessels up in 2009 to compensate for the downturn, shipowners are reneging on newbuild orders and containership charter rates are expected to continue on their downward spiral. The future looks glum.

The immediate market for terminal tractors and associated handling equipment is flat and none of the equipment suppliers

contacted expect contracts to reflect the heavy orderbook of recent times for some time.

Transtec Equipment, a supplier of its own brand of rail trailers and goosenecks, and the UK-based agent for Terberg terminal tractors and Mantsinen unloaders, has an enviable orderbook of 102 tractors to deliver from January, with about 15 units pending delivery before the end of the year, “but we don’t expect the orderbook to be as good in the future”, the company’s managing director, Keith Jones, tells Port Strategy.

Transtec’s orderbook includes contracts for 55 YT222 Terberg terminal tractors for Felixstowe and the Thames, nine RT282 units for CDMR, four for Norfolk Line, seven for P&O Irish Sea, another seven units for Seatruck Ferries, and a few for ABP Southampton. All of these were ordered prior to the downturn and the company has already delivered seven units to Seatruck and three to Portsmouth.

Transtec needs to sell about 100 tractors a year, but thinks this will be a struggle over the next few years. For the 2009 financial year, the company needs to find buyers for about 40 units between August and March 2010.

According to Mr Jones, Irish Sea trades, regardless of the recession, have already reached drastic levels and are going down rapidly in terms of ro-ro cargoes going into the ports. “They may have to cut their cloth to suit and may take ships off. There are too many ships on the Irish Sea at the moment.”

Mr Jones adds that while business at these ports retracts, brand new machines will stand idle due to the investment decisions they made six to twelve months ago. “The [marine] market has always reacted six to twelve months after other industry sectors,” Mr Jones says.