Holyhead out of action until 15th January (earliest)

Your last point is a little unfair. There are economies of scale achieved by relying on one ferry company and picking the most optimal route for time, distance and drivers hours. The reason almost everyone relies on Holyhead - Dublin is because it’s the most efficient way to get freight to Ireland.

If a shipping company decided to split their load between Holyhead and Fishguard, it would be slightly more expensive and no company would hire them someone else would use Holyhead exclusively and be cheaper.

You could argue that those companies should use companies that have redundancy in their network, but then everything they sell would be more expensive and they might lose customers. They could instead choose to keep customer price the same and use their own margin to pay for the extra redundancy but that means costing the company profit against the very small chance that a major infrastructure issue might arise.

Dublin to Holyhead is the fastest container trade route to the majority of the UK.

It also forms part of the fastest trade route to the vast majority of the EU for Irish containers or Irish destined containers too.

Sure there are other options and they play a big role too but trying to minimise Holyhead's importance to Irish trade isn't going to fundamentally change it's place in trade logistics here.

At no stage did I suggest the Irish state should gift money without a return. You seem to have a very naive attitude to the concept of infrastructure and assume that because it is located in another state then it is some obligation of that state to ensure it is maintained or rebuilt on a timely basis to support Ireland. The U.K. has nothing obligation whatsoever to ensure the maintenance of Holyhead. That is with Stena. By a similar analogy, I would assume you do not support the gas and electricity inter connectors between Ireland the UK or the proposed one with France? Do you support ownership by the Irish state of 100% of the electricity transmission network in Noethern Ireland, part of a foreign state? Do you even know that the Irish state owns 100% of the electricity transmission network in Northern Ireland.

Ireland needs both accesses though; prior to Brexit, with a clear run through the U.K. and ease of access through the UK’s south east ports, the land bridge was almost the default option. To a significant extent probably because of the relative certainty of the timeframe and the huge capacity on the U.K.-continent routes. The new routes out of Rosslare suit many who wish to deal with the Continent and for many importers. I seem to recall that it is not the preferred route for certain fresh products, including mushrooms etc. W&T on the trucks may reduce that element of the cost but will not be a deciding factor for all operators.

In 2022, Dub-Holyhead still had 5/6ths of Ireland/UK ro-ro capacity. Shifting much of that to Fishguard, Liverpool etc will be difficult. This is a quiet time of year, further shocks are unwelcome.

Don't have real world knowledge but did use the Holyhead route for years and looked at the Liverpool option. Birkenhead is simply much longer on sea than the Holyhead route and the upgrades on the road through north Wales made it the easier option, especially if you're driving up from east and south England.

There might be capacity issues in Birkenhead, but like a lot of north England and Wales infrastructure spending is very scant.

The Liverpool route certainly isn't worth it for hauliers just transiting through Britain although it might make sense coming from Belfast.

That's mostly informed speculation.

The next date is January 15th, which was effectively a kick to touch to buy some time / figure out a plan.

They will need to make an announcement about Jan 15th very soon. And after that announce the actual plan for repairs / rebuild / restore one of the other terminals as a medium term fix etc.

When you consider that 40% of the mince beef on shelves in Britain comes from Ireland you'd imagine just from a food security point of view they'd ensure that port infrastructure be paramount. But infrastructure investment in Britain has been seriously lagging, and not just in the north. The M6 is an absolute disaster!

The irish state investing in HH for a stake in the port ownership would be a good thing imo. It would ensure proper investment into the port and gives the state some influence in how the port is run - which is correct given how strategically important HH port is to ROI.

Now would be a good time to make such a deal given the problems in HH port - Stena may not want to put that much cash up front to fund the necessary repairs & upgrades to the port to bring it up to standard, so the state buying a stake could net them a bargain

Holyhead has long been amongst the top 10% most deprived areas in Wales - it especially stands out compared to the rest of Anglesey (county) which is relatively afffluent (even has a Waitrose). It might stir them into some action but it’s a long way from Cardiff and they haven’t really focused on eliminating the deprivation. Not sure if you’ve ever been there but in 50 or so trips through Holyhead, I walked around Holyhead twice. It could be a nice town but like many British working class areas with high unemployment, it’s long been hollowed out.

The principal port for Wales is Milford Haven, handling bulk supplies, roro, LNG I think plus oil and oil products. That’s where there is significant port employment in Wales. Holyhead is trying to become one of the much vaunted post Brexit free port statuses which would drive different types of employment. Only two of the terminals at Holyhead have been closed so local employment and smaller craft still use the port. Stena and Irish Ferries cannot and that is the passenger traffic and ro to capacity, 95%gguesstimate) of which do not stop anywhere but get straight in the A 55. Sure there are plenty of port employees loading trailers on and off but the pressure will be to keep the. Employed.

The Wales government has only had port responsibility since 2018 and is continuing to develop its strategy. It has limited financial resources and influence. It’s be more significant that DCC, DLR or Wex CoCo but it’s real focus is on policing, wducation, health and talking shops!

Anecdotal evidence about Irish beef in Chile is not particularly relevant. Statistics are available and those might guide your consideration/input. Irish beef is still being exported in the hoof, principally male calves as a by product of dairy industry. However, it’s only 5-8% by value of exports and not really relevant to this discussion. The Chinese have been fairly faithless as regards Irish beef as the markets have closed irregularly since first opened. The fact is that 50% of Irish beef exports are to the continent and 40-45% to the U.K. What’s left goes to those other markets which remain minor - they wouldn’t butter parsnips not to mind out proper food on a farmer’s table. The export via roro is significnat and 80% of that in the first half of 2024 went Dub-Holyhead. Some of that can go Dub-Fishguard on the Ulysses, some can be diverted to Heysham, Birkenhead etc but the capacity will be much reduced and cost significantly increased.

Ah come on, there is next to no traffic at Holyhead anymore and that means that jobs will be on the line there.

A handful of smaller craft ain’t going to need the staff that the ferries generate.

And what about the knock on effect for the local businesses?

These things don’t just affect the port employees.

People either working in the port or travelling through do spend money there.

I think you are being overly simplistic about this.

The port being closed for an extended period is not going to be good in any shape or form, and it is something that the Welsh Government would be concerned about.

indeed but the vast bulk of our exports to Germany are high value, low bulk items which will be less affected by the restrictions in transport availability. They are also MNE products which can generally absorb supply chain costs unlike price sensitive fresh food products.

As regards the intransigence point on Irish imports; it’s often easier, cheaper and more efficient to import from our closest large market.

I'm far from a brexit supporter but did notice a bit of a double standard of posters saying "The UK can sign all the trade deals they like but they'll always have a large volume of trade with the EU because it's an extremely close and very large neighbouring market. There's no escaping geography." While also saying it's wrong for Ireland to have a large volume of trade with the extremely close and very large UK market next door to us and that we should be doing our best to reduce our trade with them in favour of countries further away.