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Seatruck, which has recently made a large investment in new
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boats, has a different business model being a UT freight-only operator and (ex-UK) only on Irish Sea crossings. It is now 100% Danish, being owned by Clipper the second largest Danish shipping company behind Maersk with 250 vessels worldwide.
Deputy managing director Alistair Eagles says: 'This is a very competitive sector, but being the only exclusively freight company on Irish sea routes reduces our cost base, enables us to give better service to commercial customers and avoids seasonal friction with passenger traffic There'll always be a need for short-sea, accompanied trailers, but that's not Seatruck's market. We believe far too many hauliers send AT when they could send UT, and we expect this sector to grow in future,' he adds. "The others (their competitors) don't have our schedules and speed; you need capacity and reliability to reduce road miles. Ports also need to be close for collection and point of delivery. A good example of that is Liverpool. We have one brand-new ship, three more on order, and a further four planned,
"Overall volumes on the Irish Sea are down, but Seatruck's are up 35%," claims Eagles. "We can get more trailers on the same ship; [we're] not the biggest, Seatruck has a 8% market share, so there's room for growth and we're looking to increase volumes. Our existing boats on the Irish Sea are currently sailing to capacity"
Eagles candidly admits that from a ferry operator's perspective, a disadvantage to UT traffic can be the land requirement, since trailers aren't driven straight out of the port, but have to await collection. To this end, he says: "Seatruck has doubled the available parking at terminals and introduced doublewidth linkspans for faster turnaround."
With regards to adding value, Eagles has "no intention of getting into door-to-door road transport we are an independent ferry company, and don't want to compete with our customer base." However, for UK customers with no Irish contacts looking at UT for the first time, Seatruck can arrange traction and provide a single invoice for the complete journey.
A big challenge for Seatruck has been a lack of the right type of ship available, hence the current crop of new builds in Germany, Because of different trailer heights in Europe, it can't just draft in existing vessels. The new ones can run on one or two engines, fast during the day and slower at night, when crossing time is less important and maintenance can be done on the other engine to save downtime in port. When Seatruck's current boat-building programme is complete, there will be 12 ships at its disposal.
In future, Eagles believes he'll see "more crossover of lo-io (containers) and RO-RO, with potential for more on-trailer container movements," something already evident on Baltic and North Sea routes.