Central & Northern Ports

[Horus]

Interesting to read that one of the benefits of Brexit will be a transfer of goods through Central and Northern ports giving a big boost to those areas. I was surprised to find out that there are more goods shipped through ports like Hull, Grimsby and Immingham than through Dover. The other advantage is that these ports are not reliant on the French and usually operate through the more friendly ports like Belgium and the Netherlands who have already employed more customs officials to deal with the additional trade they expect to arise. Other figures show that shipping by sea is also cheaper when compared to conventional transport by vehicles, the per ‘sea mile’ is cheaper than road miles. Although the journey times are longer the lower sea mile cost justifies this, in addition drivers do not need to accompany the containers on a 12 hour trip as they can just be offloaded at the port and collected at the destination end by other vehicles. This also allows more time for on-board documentation to take place thus rendering delays (if any) less likely. I can only see this as a win win situation as we have many large ports situated all over the country that can up their capacity and leave us far less vulnerable to the whims of the French who will soon realise that we have capacity elsewhere if they do not play ball on the channel routes, so its not all doom and gloom as some would have us believe.

[Ruby Slippers]

That's good news! It could probably reduce the pollution factor down here in the south-east from the lorries etc coming from the continent too!

[Horus]

I think that is the general idea RS, if everything is not trying to get through the channel ports then the traffic problem will be seriously reduced, it should have happened years ago to be honest. Also if we do get that 'Northern Cross Rail' link as Boris has promised then cities like Liverpool, Manchester etc. can get goods to the port of Hull by rail taking more heavy goods off the roads, bring it on I say.