It is perhaps stating the obvious to say that when you live on an island, ports are vital to everything: our daily lives, our businesses and future prosperity and the UK’s transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Figures from the Department for Transport show that both imports and exports through our ports are declining. The latest statistics published show that tonnage through ports in the year to March 2024 decreased by 6%; coal for power stations is no longer needed and coal for steel production will decline as the steel industry moves away from blast furnaces to electric arc furnaces. Liquid bulks are also declining as we head towards net zero.
Wind power in the UK will increase – whatever party is in power after the general election – which will increase activity at many of our ports. But operators still face an incredible amount of uncertainty about what investment will be required where.
Ports will need to invest significantly in infrastructure to service floating offshore wind (FLOW) projects, but they need to know where FLOW projects will be in order to do that. The Government has launched the £160m FLOWMIS (Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Scheme) to support early enablement works and in March this year announced that two ports had been put onto a Primary List: Associated British Port’s Port Talbot and Port of Cromarty Firth, a trust port.
Much more investment must be secured. According to the FLOW Taskforce, £3.45bn will be needed to hit the target of 50MW of offshore wind by 2030.
Ports and roads
What happens at our ports of course impacts heavily on our other transport networks, both local and national. Back in 2021, National Highways made this point in its Economic Role of National Highways document.
National Highways reported then that more traffic was coming into eastern ports to avoid EU traffic arriving at Southeastern ports, increasing demands on the strategic road network (SRN) connecting those ports and to the M1, M6 and M62 corridors. It predicted that more logistics facilities would appear in the Golden Triangle, in South Yorkshire and along the M62, increasing traffic there. And it flagged up that changes to rail and road networks will be needed to transport freight more efficiently from the Solent ports of Southampton and Portsmouth.
Some retailers would like to see more cargo coming into Northern ports. Currently, 90% of deep-sea containerised cargo enters the UK through southern ports such as Southampton and Felixstowe, but 60% of this then heads North. At an event earlier this year, organised by the British Retail Consortium and Peel Ports – which operates a port at Liverpool – retailers discussed how shipping goods to a Northern port could cut carbon emissions and congestion.
Ports do get a mention in both the main parties’ manifestos. Although, given their importance and influence, perhaps not enough. The Conservative manifesto says it will create more Freeports while Labour’s manifesto says that it will allocate £1.8bn from the National Wealth Fund to upgrade ports and build supply chains.
Whatever the outcome, port operators – and those that operate the transport networks that connect to them – need a clearer view of long-term strategies and greater certainty so that they can plan their own transformations and attract the investment they need.
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