UK Port Plans – No Election fever here!
A UK election has been called and the last time this happened when there were any particular port issues on the agenda was when Margaret Thatcher was in power and overseeing a serious round of port privatisation. Suddenly, all the deliberations were over and decisions were made on who had won what in terms of the ports to be privatised. As PS recalls, management buyout teams (MBOs) had much to be thankful for in this respect; they emerged as the major winners and for the large part have probably now made their respective fortunes in the resale market.
Nothing wrong with that – after all a significant chunk of what privatisation is all about is putting a government asset in an enterprise culture and adding value to it, and probably at some point selling it on!
There might have been a lot of bleating at the time about undervaluing public assets and selling them for bargain basement prices to the MBOs but who really knows?
Even today, there are relatively few serious benchmarks about valuing port assets and as such it is by no means an exact science – a point made strongly last month at the Port Investors Forum held in London.
Well, again the UK has an imminent election and again there are serious port issues on the agenda – where and when major new containerport capacity will be approved by government to be precise.
On this occasion though, the message coming down from on high and all concerned is that there is unlikely to be a pre-election decision by government on this critical issue. It seems, in effect, this decision making process will run and run, tangled and twisted by an ever increasing number of extraneous and interfacing issues not the least of which now is who is going to pay for the interfacing transport infrastructure to new port sites (see PS Jan/Feb 2005 p. 24-27).
Clearly on the industry side virtually everyone is extremely bored, if not a little amazed, that it is taking so long to come to a concrete decision about installing new containerport capacity, and certainly this factor seems to be a major catalyst behind the formation of a new container shipping line panel by the UK’s Chamber of Shipping.
Initial members will comprise CMA CGM, Hatsu Marine, Maersk Sealand, P&O Nedlloyd and Zodiac Maritime, and new port, road and rail capacity will be an issue high on their combined agenda.
It will be interesting to see how this new panel fares in seeking answers from government – it can’t do any worse than anyone else so far except perhaps ABP who got the red light flashed up to its Dibden Bay project and a huge bill to boot!
Related Articles
INSIGHT & OPINION
INSIGHT & OPINION
INSIGHT & OPINION