Seaborne Freight

Seaborne Freight (UK) Limited was a company that planned to run roll-on roll-off (ro-ro) ferries between the Port of Ramsgate, England and Port of Ostend, Belgium. It was formed in April 2017 and announced its plans in October 2017. It was awarded a £13.8 million contract by the UK Department for Transport in December 2018 in the case of a no-deal Brexit but there was controversy and doubts about the company's ability to provide the service and the contract was cancelled on 9 February 2019. On 8 September 2020, the company began a voluntary liquidation owing £2 million.

Company history

Formation

Seaborne Freight (UK) Limited was incorporated on 5 April 2017. The people behind Seaborne Freight were claimed to have many years of English Channel ferry experience including with Sealink, SeaFrance and MyFerryLink.

Seaborne's founder and chief operating officer, Glenn Dudley, was imprisoned for two months for possessing a shotgun, in relation to a protest by animal rights activists against a live cattle exporting company in Shoreham-by-Sea of which he was a director in the 1990s. The exports were legal but because of the protests the local police had to bring in 1,000 extra officers to enable the exports to proceed. One protester was killed during a confrontation with the police. Dudley said he borrowed the shotgun to have it as "what you’d call a backstop" as protection against protesters who picketed his house. Later, when the police decided to withdraw the expensive extra security, the company launched an unsuccessful lawsuit to reverse the decision.

The company's chief executive, Ben Sharp, previously ran Mercator, a ship chartering business, that was forced into liquidation following court petitions from HM Revenue and Customs. The amount of unpaid tax was not stated, but the former company had a total of £1.78m in unpaid debts.

In October 2017, it was announced that Seaborne Freight would operate an Ostend - Ramsgate ro-ro freight ferry service from March using three ships, including the MS ''Nord Pas-de-Calais''. The route was previously operated by Transeuropa Ferries until 2013 when it filed for bankruptcy. In August 2018 the Belgian media reported that Seaborne's plans were directly connected to Brexit and later in August, the leader of Thanet District Council - which had just assumed responsibility for the Port of Ramsgate - stated that a ferry deal was 'close'. A further report in November 2018 expressed scepticism as to whether the start of operations was imminent and noted that there were still a lot of obstacles.

Contract awarded by British government

On 22 December 2018, the company was awarded a £13.8 million contract to run ferry services between Ramsgate and Ostend to lessen the consequences of probable capacity constraints on the Dover - Calais route after 29 March 2019 in the case of a no-deal Brexit.

In early January 2019, it was reported that Seaborne was aiming to begin operating services with two ships in late March, rising to four by the end of the summer.

According to the government, the award of the contract without prior publication of an invitation to tender in the ''Official Journal of the European Union'' (OJEU) was justified by the "extreme urgency" brought about by unforeseeable events. A negotiated procurement procedure without prior publication in the OJEU is permitted in urgent conditions under Regulation 32 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.Browne, Dom (7 January 2019
MPs get little answer from government over Seaborne Freight
in ''TransportNetwork''. Retrieved 11 January 2019

Controversy

The announcement that Seaborne Freight had been awarded the contract caused controversy after it was revealed that at the time contract was signed, the company had no ships and had never operated any. Critics also pointed out that the Port of Ramsgate would need to be dredged before services could begin and raised questions as to whether due diligence checks had been undertaken before the award of the contract. By 3 January 2019 dredging had begun in Ramsgate.

Britain's Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling, defended the decision to award the contract to Seaborne Freight. Grayling said the contract was an example of the government helping “a new start-up business” and insisted “there is nothing wrong with that”. A spokesperson from the Department for Transport told reporters that “Before any contract was signed, due diligence on Seaborne Freight was carried out both by senior officials at the Department for Transport, and highly reputable independent third party organisations".

On 3 January 2019, it was reported that the Seaborne Freight website displayed terms and conditions that appeared to have been copied and pasted from an online food ordering website and a boutique jewellery shop. Reports also noted that certain website functions such as the 'Portal Log-in' were in fact non-functional inline images.

On 7 January 2019, Joanna Cherry MP enquired in the House of Commons about the reason for the government using Regulation 32 procedures to enable it to negotiate the Seaborne contract behind closed doors without a published invitation to tender, when it had known for some time that there was a risk of the UK leaving the EU without a deal. She asked whether the government would publish the legal advice it was given that enabled it to proceed under Regulation 32. She was not given an answer. On 9 January 2019, in a parliamentary ''Brexit Committee'' meeting, Cherry asked Christopher Heaton-Harris, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union, what "extreme urgency" enabled the government to use Regulation 32, given that the government had had staff working on no-deal Brexit contingency planning for two years, but again her question was not answered.

The Mayor of Ostend, Bart Tommelein, had told the BBC
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