Four services to move to SCT’s feeder terminal

Four services to move to SCT’s feeder terminal    Four weekly intra-Europe services will later this month move to Southampton Container Terminals’ Berth 203, recently renovated to exclusively handle feeder ships.
   Three of the services will be operated by X-Press Container Line linking Southampton with Belfast, Dublin and Bilbao. The fourth service will be operated by OOCL between Southampton and Grangemouth.
   Earlier this month SCT commissioned a dedicated 100-ton mobile harbor crane to be used at Berth 203 on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week basis. The terminal is adjacent to the current four deepwater berths at SCT and can handle feeder vessels of up to 150 meters (492 feet) in length.
   Speaking about the new services, Patrick Walters, SCT’s managing director, said: “It will help to achieve the company’s target of making transshipment traffic 10 percent of annual throughput by the end of 2007.
   “The more boxes we can move by sea results in fewer boxes traveling by road. These new services further reinforce SCT’s decision to invest in the new facility,” Walters said.
   SCT is jointly owned by DP World (51 percent) and Associated British Ports (49 percent).