Intra-European container shipping specialist, MacAndrews hopes to revolutionise the transportation of fresh produce from Spain to the UK and Ireland. It has been trialing the carriage of fresh produce in 45ft reefer high-cube, pallet-wide containers from Spain to the UK and Ireland.
The shipper’s trials ran over the past three months and have concentrated on product outturn quality and transit time and included shipments of lettuce, broccoli, citrus, apples, pears, easy-peelers, lemons and onions in door-to-door movements by road to Bilbao, then onward shipment by sea. MacAndrews’s is targeting this alternative to road transport at European growers and buyers of temperature-controlled commodities.
Mark Copsey, Iberian trade manager for MacAndrews, said: “Trials to prove outturn quality and transit time have been successful. We are now concentrating on convincing category managers within the fresh produce sector to transfer a proportion of their truck movements to our seaborne solutions before we make a significant investment in a dedicated pool of 45ft reefers.
Long-term MacAndrews hopes to run six vessels in four direct sailings a week from Cartagena to Bristol in a 4.5-day door-to-door service. “In order to make it work we would need to get 50 per cent of the current road volumes to commit to our service,” said Copsey. “We believe that with the advent of the EU working-time directive that is likely to increase road-freight costs, it is not a matter of if reefer container shipments will take off, but when.
“We believe that we have devised an alternative system that will meet shippers’ needs, is more friendly to the environment and satisfies the EU’s desire to see more intra-European cargo carried by sea.”
MacAndrews also has hubs at Felixstowe, Liverpool, Greenock and Dublin
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