Knock-on effect of crane collapse

2:14pm Monday 18th February 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

• Play Video

THE impact of a crane collapse at Southampton's container port will be much worse than first feared after bosses revealed it will take another month to get back to full speed.

Boss Campbell Mason had forecast they would be getting back to normal ten days ago, but has now revised his estimate until the middle of March.

Although no one was injured, the collapse of a crane boom onto the Kyoto Express on January 18 has had a massive impact on Southampton Container Terminals, with health and safety inspections of all the remaining ten cranes creating major headaches.

At the time of writing, a total of five out of 11 cranes were still out of action and the cause of the accident was still a mystery.

Key clients have switched ships away from the port, while others have been forced to reroute shipments through rivals.

At least 15 ships are known to have gone elsewhere, with the number of ship calls down by 40 per cent.

Container giant Maersk, the world's biggest container carrier, has only been able to make one of its four scheduled weekly Southampton stops in the past month.

Meanwhile, it has been a boost for rival ports Thamesport, Tilbury and Rotterdam, which have all received extra business thanks to the backlog of ships waiting to unload that quickly formed at Southampton.

Car manufacturer Honda lost production of 1,000 cars because of the incident, which delayed a shipment of parts and forced it to close its Swindon factory for the day.

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."

Southampton is the UK's second biggest container port and handles around 1.8m boxes a year, representing 45 per cent of the UK's trade with the Far East.

It's a joint venture between port owner ABP, which owns 49 per cent and global ports giant Dubai Ports World, which has 51 per cent.