COVID AND CHRISTMAS ARE TO BLAME FOR THIS CHAOS – NOT BREXIT
Driven to despair: Huge lorry tailbacks at clogged ports
DOVER again bore the brunt of traffic chaos on roads going into Channel ports yesterday, with huge tailbacks of trucks hit by delays passing through.
Backlogs of cargo at ports have been caused by the impact of the pandemic on trade and a Christmas rush of imports and exports.
British businesses and food companies have
For some diehard remainers, the images are a vision of what is to come after Britain leaves the European Union – especially if No Deal is in play. Snaking queues of lorries on the approach road to Dover port and far beyond; shipping containers piling up on docksides; a logjam of goods for distribution, from furniture and bikes to toys, hitech gadgets and car parts, amid rumours of food left rotting where it is offloaded.
Such is the mounting chaos in UK ports right now that there are fears that Christmas will be ruined for millions of families who won’t get the goods and gifts they have ordered in time, while food prices soar because supermarkets are without stock to replenish shelves.
The cause is not, however, Brexit. Instead, a potent combination of events is to blame.
Firstly and most importantly, the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted international shipping from Asia, and there is a shortage of containers in China because empty ones have not been returned from ports around the world.
At the same time, anxious British consumers have begun stockpiling goods – leading to increased demand from suppliers – ahead of a possible No Deal Brexit. Demand has also risen because of Christmas.
To further complicate matters, there are unusually large incoming shipments of PPE to be dealt with dockside, plus delays for freight lorries at the Channel Tunnel. In addition, the also been stockpiling, bringing in products ahead of the December 31 Brexit deadline.
road haulage industry leaders warn the jams seen in recent days could be a taste of chaos to come when Britain leaves the EU. They also suggested a No Deal Brexit could dockside work force has been hammered by illness or the need to isolate because of exposure to the virus.
All of these factors have combined to put Britain’s ports under huge strain. Some ships are now by passing our ports altogether and heading instead for rotterdam.
Felixstowe, which handles 40 per cent of UK container traffic, has been hardest hit, but problems are spreading to Southampton and London Gateway.
Companies including Apple, fashion chains Primark and river Island, sofa firm DFS and the folding-bicycle manufacturer Brompton have all warned that their products now face lengthy delays and, in some cases, may not arrive here for many weeks.
Honda this week announced it had suspended car production because of a shortage of imported parts.
For Felixstowe, the biggest problem appears to be the containers of PPE for the NHS and care homes which the Government’s freight forwarders have been slow to move out of the port. At one point there were 11,000 containers of PPE sitting on the dockside, although port authorities now say the backlog will be cleared by the end of this week.
A Channel Tunnel spokesman, meanwhile, is blaming the ‘sheer volume of traffic from stockpiling, pre- Christmas build-up and
lead to protests by French fishermen blockading ports.
Problems that began at container ports such as Felixstowe and Southampton have cascaded to others along the coast. This is because many hauliers are switching to using roll-on roll-off ferries and the Eurotunnel to cross the Channel and make their delivery targets. The authorities in Kent transporting medical supplies and vaccines for Covid care’.
Some 2000 extra trucks are passing through each day, the rise especially in the direction of the UK.
Throw into the mix a traffic managing system that has done little to ease congestion and it’s no wonder chaos has ensued.
The pictures this week of long tailbacks in Dover were the direct result of an operation called the Traffic Access Protocol (TAP). have been forced to introduce measures to control traffic flows to Dover and the Channel Tunnel for four days in a row to cope with the congestion.
Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road haulage Association, said: ‘This is definitely the beginning of something. It is demonstrating what we would start to see in January. how bad it will be is anyone’s guess.
This controls traffic lights on the A20 to avoid overcrowding in the Kentish coastal town – and which blocks the main trunk road to the town instead.
After TAP was lifted yesterday, traffic began flowing freely again.
At the heart of this crisis, however, is the pandemic’s impact on shipping traffic from China and the Far East that is affecting ports around the world. Demand has surged as businesses restock after lockdowns and
If we end up with a No Deal, what does that mean for French fishermen? They would probably blockade Calais and other ports, which would cause its own problems.’
Mr Burnett said one of the biggest problems is finding enough customs agents to complete all the paperwork that will surround exports to the EU.
No 10 said it would be wrong to ‘conflate’ consumers start spending again. Companies caught out when Chinese factories closed down in January as Covid first struck are now moving away from so-called justin-time supply lines to stock up on key components and other goods, further boosting demand.
At America’s busiest cargo complex, LALong Beach in California, 20 cargo ships lie anchored, unable to offload their shipments. In Australia, a long-running industrial queues of lorries at ports with Brexit. A spokesman added: ‘It has been primarily caused by a global spike in demand for consumer goods, as well as disruptions to shipping patterns and container capacity related to changes caused by the pandemic.’
A planned strike by British Airways cargo workers over Christmas is likely to add to disruption to imports and deliveries. dispute between dock workers and the port authorities is adding to the long delays in offloading and distributing goods.
Britain is one of the most enthusiastic trading nations in the world: a small, densely populated island with a limited number of very compact ports. There are always vast numbers of lorries and containers coming into and out of the country, linked by a barely adequate road system.
THE Government has taken a number of steps to alleviate holdups when the new customs checks come into force on January 1 in post-Brexit Britain.
An inland customs facility is being built just outside Ashford in Kent to process lorries before they reach Dover or the Channel Tunnel.
This weekend, trials will begin of a new barrier system to allow contraflow traffic on the M20 in the event that lorries have to be held on the motorway.
If no trade deal is agreed with the EU before the transition period ends on January 1, there will certainly be some problems at British ports.
But the bigger picture is that as the global economy is starting to recover from a very sharp contraction we are only beginning to realise just how much it relies on freight transport.