MORE than 50 trailers of freight are set to be shipped into the Isle of Man overnight on the Ben-my-Chree.
The Steam Packet has issued a statement in response to growing concerns about possible shortages in supplies due to thenumber of sailing cancellations in recent days.
Chief executive Mark Woodward said: ‘Despite the cancellations towards the end of last week, we had almost cleared the port of standard freight traffic by Monday (December 5). All urgent freight traffic had been shipped.
‘Today (Wednesday), we have around 60 trailers in Heysham bound for the Isle of Man. The Ben-my-Chree will sail for Heysham this evening as scheduled at 7.45pm, returning at 2.15am. We will be able to ship in excess of 50 trailers tonight, together with some other freight traffic and passenger vehicles.’
He added: ‘When there are weather issues, our freight customers do prioritise what is urgent and what is not within the space allocations they have.
‘A number of stores have confirmed that they make provision for such eventualities by utilising on-island warehousing and this is reflected in the fact that shelves in local stores are not uniformly empty, as has been claimed in the media.
‘In response to calls for us to charter another vessel, we have looked at this possibility. However, given the current weather patterns, it is difficult to see how chartering another vessel, even if one was available, would help the situation. Any vessels that are suitable in terms of size for Douglas harbour are typically older freighters with limited manoeuvrability themselves.
‘However, of much more relevance is that they are simply not readily available for short-term charter.’
Mr Woodward said: ‘Thankfully, the Ben-my-Chree is a very large capacity vessel allowing us to quickly catch up with any freight requirements, so minimizing the potential for disruption.’
The Ben-my-Chree is set to go into dry dock next week for repairs on a bow thruster which was damaged earlier this year and as a result has exacerbated recent problems.