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THE CAT was certainly let out of the bag at the conference which ran in conjunction with the recent Ports and Terminals Exhibition at Manchester by Mrs. D. C. L. Johnstone, a Commissioner of Customs, who was one of the speakers. She was defending H.M. Customs against the charge of being non-flexible when she pointed out that this was certainly not the case with OCL/ACT ships which were returning from their first Australian runs to Southampton!
At the time of writing. Tilbury—at least as far as the Australian container services are concerned—is still a dead duck and, according to one prominent official of the PLA, OCL and ACT may have to follow the example of Transport Ferry Service who, a couple of years ago, pulled out its Antwerp roll-ow' roll-off service to Felixstowe because of the exorbitant sums it had to pay dock labour to load and unload its ships—reputed to be in the region of £100 a week! Rumour has it that the union concerned, whose members reverted to the lowly wages of ordinary dock labour, are making strong overtures to have TFS back at Tilbury on its (TFS's) terms.
The pity of it is that a Ulm investment is lying idle at Tilbury.