SHIPPING LINES AT WAR

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25768, 1 April 1949, Page 7

SHIPPING LINES AT WAR

DUTCH FREIGHTERS TO LOAD IN BRITAIN

INTERNATIONAL RATES CUT 60 PER CENT.

(Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, March 31. Dutch shipping lines which have opened a freight war against British and Indian shipping companies on the Eastern route have announced that during the next seven weeks they will send five ships in the 7000 and 8000 tons class to pick up-for the first time cargoes from British ports. The Dutch shipping lines admitted that they were accepting freight rates for these cargoes 60 per cent, below the rates which the International Shipping Conference—from which they had withdrawn—had fixed. International Shipping Conference lines consist of the P. and O. Line, the British India Steamship Company, Ellerrhan Lines, the Brocklebank Line, the City Line, the Harrison Line, the Clan Line, the Anchor Line, Hall’s Line, and two Indian companies, the India Steamship Company, and the Scindip Steam Navigation Company. The London agent for the invading Dutch lines said that the first Dutch ship to arrive for undercut freights would reach Glasgow on April 9, and ro to Liverpool. The agent explained that the Dutch lines were coming to British ports for cargoes because trade at their previous ports of Hamburg, Bremen. Rotterdam, and Antwerp was a shadow of what it was before the war.

The secretary of the International Shipping Conference said: “The war is being carried into our camp. We shall fight back.”