TIMBER HAULAGE
Taking timber
over the water
Based at its home port of Corpach, Fort William, Great Glen Shipping Company
provides a sea freight service throughout the west coast of the UK. James Hendrie
paid a visit to learn how the company has carved out a niche in timber haulage.70 AUGUST 20 19 FORESTRYJOURNAL.CO.UKG
REAT Glen Shipping Company (GGSC) is
heading for the completion of its first decade
transporting timber and other products by
sea in and around the west coast of Scotland
and the Irish Sea. The company, which was
incorporated in January 20 10 , thanks to the financial
support of Transport Scotland and Highlands and
Islands Enterprise, is the brainchild of Liam Browning.
Liam, a student of Newcastle University, where he
studied Naval Architecture and Marine Transport, carried
out an academic study on the movement of goods on
the UK’s inland waterways. His study was supported
financially by Bill Broad and having established a case,
in theory, Liam set about proving it could be done in
practice.
He settled on the movement of cargo to Inverness via
the Caledonian Canal. A £122,000 Mode Shift Revenue
Support Grant was secured from the Scottish Government,
with a further £65,000 coming from Highlands and Islands
Enterprise, allowing a six-month trial to be carried out.
“We hired a vessel, the MV Kanutta, but the winter
of 2010 was very severe, with temperatures of minus 15
degrees, and the canal actually froze over,” said Liam.
“This severely affected our ability to prove that we couldmove timber from Loch Etive, near Oban, up to Norbord at
Inverness. The original idea was to do this and to back-
haul fish feed down the canal.
“Interestingly, this misfortune on the weather front led
us to get other cargo contracts. We ended up moving
rock salt for the roads by sea and coal to Stornoway.
Both commodities were badly needed because of the
severe weather. In the end, we made 20 voyages up the
canal, taking 16 lorryloads of timber per voyage off the
congested Highland road network. Doing this was very
much part of our rationale for moving cargo by water in
the first place.”
Even though this initial idea was to prove unviable,
from a commercial point of view, GGSC and others had
established that timber could be moved by ship on the
west coast waters. Liam’s business partners Calum Boyd
and Christine MacColl, both from Boyd Brothers Haulage,
had some good contacts in the timber industry and that
was a big help in establishing the business.
Operating out of the port at Corpach, they found
themselves ideally placed to help move the wealth of
timber that was available on the west coast islands of
Scotland to the ever-growing BSW K2 sawmill, located
next door to them. The K2 sawmill, over the period that theAbove: CEG Cosmos
and CEG Universe,
one bringing logs
into Corpach and the
other taking small
roundwood out.