Dublin’s Lo-Lo port boom marks the transition to Irish trade after Brexit

From the top of Dublin harbor, Eamonn O’Reilly can see how Brexit will change Irish trade.

Rapid growth in Dublin is what O’Reilly, the port’s chief of staff, says “Lo-Lo traffic” – unmanned cargo that is being loaded onto ships and taken to the destination port.

Lo-Lo’s companion, “Ro-Ro” – where cargo is sent to the back of trucks and rolls to and from ships – is declining. Ro-Ro’s exports are mainly to Great Britain, Ireland’s trading partner, and the change is a reflection of how Ireland’s largest port – as well as the country’s economy – is facing in Europe.

“When you travel long distances to Europe, [Lo-Lo] it is possible because it is cheaper, ”O’Reilly said in an interview with the recently expanded tribunal. The new phase of the € 1.6bn 30-year port size plan, announced in November, includes Lo-Lo’s largest shipping system in Ireland.

Prior to Brexit, Dublin’s most important commercial and continental European continent served as its gateway to the “railway bridge” via the UK. Freight cars can cross the Irish Sea and cross Britain before moving to France or other parts of the EU.

Now post-Brexit checks are pushing for more carriers to divert goods from Dublin to the EU, across the UK as a whole. Since the UK left the EU earlier this year, Lo-Lo votes from Dublin have risen 14 percent compared to the same period last year, according to local data.

Dublin Port trade is now split 50-50 between the UK and the EU, while before Brexit, British trade and ports took up about two-thirds of the volume, O’Reilly said.

Ireland is betting on such a trade. Last month, it opened a a shopping center in Dunkirk as an entrance to the continent, to be shipped from the southern port of Rosslare, Dublin’s archenemy.

The Irish Maritime Development Office says Irish expatriates and exports now have access to 13 EU Ro-Ro direct operations, up from just six in 2019, prior to the Covid-19 crash.

Mu a new report, found that the Irish-EU population was 52 per capita in the first nine months of this year than in the whole of 2019.

Another major change in Dublin is affecting Northern Ireland. Since 2006, Dublin has been handling a lot of shipments to Britain because the routes from Dublin are very short. By last year, Dublin had captured the Ro-Ro quarterback of all three Northern Ireland ports – Belfast, Larne and Warrenpoint – combined.

But now – thanks to a red tape of lawsuits that began when Brexit imposed a foreign border on the Irish Sea – trade is going to Britain. via Northern Irish ports. The volume of Ro-Ro goods in Dublin has dropped by a quarter in the first nine months of this year, O’Reilly said.

“I think it will always be. . . It’s going backwards, “he said.” History shows me that [this trade] I will not return again.

Joe O’Neill, chief of Belfast Harbor, told FT that he had seen a “slight change” in previous practices with Ro-Ro rate of 5 to 7 percent in the first nine months of this year, compared to the time period. the same last year.

“We suspect that the growth we are currently experiencing at Ro-Ro is part of the growing number of vehicles that do not leave the Dublin port,” he said.

O’Reilly said Brexit had led to some unexpected change.

While Dublin’s port was down 3.3 percent in the first nine months compared to the same period last year, the volume of cargo and trailers dropped by 0.5 percent, O’Reilly said.

“We think the thing that is going on here is that, almost, the goods are smaller in each container,” he said. Combining the goods in one container may require several customs checks under post-Brexit rules.

“It’s a failure that results in supply chains but it is a bad thing in terms of carbon exposure,” O’Reilly said. More vessels also put power on the port that has already been squeezed, he added.