Port crane collapse continues to hit container business

11:01am Monday 4th February 2008

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BUSINESS at Southampton Container Terminals is still being "significantly" affected by the aftermath of the crane accident which happened 17 days ago.

All last week the port was running at around half normal capacity as emergency inspections put other cranes out of action.

The container port, which handles the majority of the UK's trade with the Far East and is the second largest in the country, will start getting back to normal by the end of the week.

SCT managing director Campbell Mason said customers had been "relatively understanding", but added it was not possible to say how many ships had been diverted, how much business had been lost or how many containers had gone to other ports as a result of the accident.

He also said the cause of the sudden collapse of part of one of the giant harbourside cranes remained a mystery.

No one was injured when the boom of one of SCT's 11 cranes fell onto the Kyoto Express containership on January 18, but the port shutdown saw ships re- routed and entire supply chains interrupted.

Car giant Honda lost production of around 1,000 cars because of the incident.

Hundreds of staff were sent home at the Japanese firm's £1.3 billion Swindon factory when lorry loads of vital parts such as gearboxes were held up by the accident, halting production of Civics and CRVs.

Mr Mason said: "It is having a significant impact on our business. We are able to get good productivity out of the five cranes that are operating. We have had vessels diverting to other ports in the UK and on the continent.

"It is not only significant for us but for customers in the supply chain. It has been disruptive but they have been relatively understanding and we are working with them to minimise the disruption.

"Roughly, we are operating at more than half of shipside capacity. We are looking at a progressive return of the other cranes into service and we hope to be operating eight by the end of the week.

"I can't comment on an ongoing investigation but we are not yet at the point of identifying a cause."