Some Irish Port and Shipping developments by Howard Knott

• Irish Ferries has put the vessel W.B. Yeats onto a summer schedule that gives a departure ex Dublin for Cherbourg every two days. Transit time is eighteen hours. The company expects to take delivery of what will be the largest ferry operating in Northern Europe during the second half of 2020.
• Eucon Shipping has chartered a significantly larger vessel to operate its weekly Antwerp–Dublin container service. The extra capacity at Antwerp will relieve pressure on the weekend Rotterdam-Dublin service.
• The UK Government has withdrawn the Brexit-busting subsidies from DFDS and Brittany Ferries that had been put into place to enable more capacity to be put into place on routes other than those crossing the Dover Straits. This was part of the contingency planning to deal with a “No Deal” Brexit.
• Neptune Lines has changed the rotation and ports called in its Santander to Northern Europe service. Rosslare becomes the first Port of Call after Santander with calls every eight days. The vessel then sails on to Portbury, near Bristol, and Zeebrugge, before returning to Santander via Le Havre and Southampton.
• The Port of Dublin is in the process of implementing a new container quay rent scheme with significant reductions in the number of Free Days and increases in charges for days over the free period. These charges apply at the Common User Terminal. The Port Company does not set quay rent charges for the DFT and MTL terminals in the Port. The new charges have been introduced in order to reduce congestion within the terminal.
• International Warehousing and Transport (IWT) has increased the weekly schedule of freight trains chartered from Iarnrod Eireann and operated on the Dublin Port-Ballina route to nine round trips weekly. Significant investment in Ballina inland Port by IWT and Iarnrod Eireann has facilitated this development and has enabled the facility there to become a hub for container operations within the North West.
• The second vessel in Stena Line’s Irish Sea fleet development has been launched in China. The first such vessel the Stena Estrid is scheduled to displace the significantly smaller Stena Superfast X on the Dublin-Holyhead route in spring 2020.

Howard Knott