DFDS scuppers Dover-Calais space charter after P&O finds new partner
NewsDFDS has told the market that they will be sailing solo on the busy Dover-Calais route, as their space charter agreement with P&O Ferries expires at the end of August.
Dover attacks privatisation reporting frenzy
Dover Harbour Board, which runs one of the UK’s few remaining (and most profitable) “Trust” ports, has attacked press reports suggesting that the port is being sold to the French Port of Calais
The reports were described by DHB’s CEO Bob Goldfield “as total fabrication and extremely misleading. We are in the very early stages of the [privatisation] procedure and the actual sales process will not begin until the Secretary of State gives his approval and that is unlikely to be in the next few weeks.
“Our advisors [NM Rothschild] and our Board have not had any conversations with the Port of Calais on this matter and no such conversations are planned or expected.”
A report on why Dover is seeking to go private, and why the British government is encouraging this line, is contained in the January 2010 edition of WorldCargo News.
Goldfield has a point. Some ludicrous “flag-waving” reports on the sale have appeared in the British tabloids. One report conjured up images of Dover’s famous white cliffs and castle as symbols of Britain’s freedom against the “former age-old enemy – France.”
It then provided a laughable anachronism by showing a picture of a Spitfire Battle of Britain fighter plane against the backdrop of the cliffs! For good measure, some good old-fashioned French-bashing was elicited from the good people of Dover.
As it happens a sale to CCI Calais would likely be rejected on competition grounds, even if NM Rothschild/DHB thought it was the best solution.
Any sale is opposed by the local MP and his “oppo,” the port workers and most of the local community, but their main concerns are jobs, investment and the impact on town life, as well as fear of the unknown.
Britain’s tabloid press seems blissfully unaware that most of Britain’s port assets have long since been sold off to foreigners – Chinese, Arabs, German and Australian (latterly Canadian) investment funds, etc.
There are major arguments – social, economic and geopolitical – to be had over the wisdom of successive British governments’ laissez-faire approach, permitting strategic assets such as ports to pass out of domestic hands, irrespective of whether those hands are public or private. But can we come up with something better than invoking the shades of Agincourt. [Vincent Champion]
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