Is the Calais crisis really costing the UK £250m a day in lost trade?
It seems vastly improbable. The figure was issued by the Freight Transport Association (FTA), derived, using a crude calculation, from a 2014 study on the value of trade passing through the port of Dover.
In the study commissioned by Dover – and yet to be released – economics consultancy Oxera calculated the annual value of goods in the 2.2m freight vehicles travelling via Dover and Calais to be £89bn, a figure quoted by the FTA as the yearly “worth of UK trade”.
So when Calais closes, in theory, the daily bill is 1/365 of that £89bn, or roughly £250m. Potentially, that back-of-an-envelope figure could be pushed higher: Dover claims freight traffic has since expanded considerably, allowing them to talk about a figure of £100bn a year. And ferries have a market share of 63% on the short Channel crossing, which would give a rough estimate of the combined tunnel and ferry trade as £140bn-£160bn annually.
But, the trouble is that the port of Calais has only been entirely closed on a few days so far. And any reckoning should also take into account the fact that around a quarter of the ferry traffic normally goes to alternative French ports such as Dunkirk – and more ships were diverted when Calais was closed by striking French ferry workers. Also, despite the long queues of lorries in Operation Stack and the disruption around the tunnel, Eurotunnel’s Shuttle services have continued to run, albeit with some delays.
Trade may be delayed, but that is a long way from describing it as “lost”. The author of the original Dover study at Oxera, whose conclusion has been woefully misused in some reports, believes there will indeed be losses to the UK economy, but only a small percentage of the alleged £250m daily cost.
The FTA is probably on safer ground when describing how the cumulative disruption and long waits to cross the Channel – with two ferries out of action since the closure of MyFerryLink – is hitting freight drivers and some suppliers. The FTA estimates a cost of £750,000 a day through delays and spoiled loads, with £2m of fresh produce having to be dumped each week. A 100-mile detour to avoid Calais would cost the average HGV another £52 in fuel, and every hour’s delay adds £60 in costs, the FTA says. And to add insult to injury, drivers have been fined £6.6m in the past year when migrants have stowed aboard.
