DCO accepted for examination

There was jubilation in the Airport Supporters last week when National Planning accepted the DCO application for "Examination". Does this mean aviation is returning to Manston? In a word NO.

What is now going to happen is people can register from the 3rd September 2018 so that they can submit their views to the examining inspector(s).

Every aspect of the application will be examined and questioned including whether there is enough money and whether there is a viable market for an Airfreight Hub.

Money
Even as they accepted the application for examination PINS wrote to RSP and warned them that their financial statement was underwhelming with many gaps included.

This clearly shows that PINS is not accepting that RSP have sufficient money available as all they confirm is they have drawn down £1/2M and as their parent company is based in Belize there is no proof that they have the £15M they say they have said would be sufficient to buy the land and Blight claims.

Business plan
At no place in the 11500 pages of submission have RSP elected to provide a solid business plan which covers all the costs (including payment of interest and running costs) nor indeed do they actually state where the freight will be coming from. Nor indeed do they show how much each landing fee will be and how that interacts with the running costs of the Freight Hub. To give you an idea of the costs involved in 1995 the local MP stated the running costs where in the region of £7M a year.
So PINS has accepted that to be an Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) it is only necessary to have 5000 planes land and take off in a year. which is just under 14 a day. So how does that compare to its previous operational air transport movements

Best year (under Tony Freudman) 3333 of which airfreight 730, airfreight being 2 planes a day. For those that do not remember Planestation went into receivership in 2005 and Infertil bought the remnants from the official receiver umped £40-50M and still failed to make a profit. So how many flights did Infertil manage?

Rather less than 500 planes a year it seems, no wonder Infertil couldn't make a profit.

So now we are in 2018 and the airport has been closed 4 years and the airfreight market has moved on what is different?

Background

The airfreight market has changed however the changes do not favour Manston. The airfreight tonnage has remained somewhat stable for the last 10 years at 2.3M tonnes but how it has carried has markedly changed. Tony Freudmann has committed the DCO business plan at dedicated air freighters and has stated, on more than one occasion, that they aren't interested in competing with Heathrow. So any talk about supporting UK Plc until the third runway is built is just that, talk.

Heathrow today handles 67% of all airfreight coming into the UK but 95% of that is carried in the belly of passenger planes a market that RSP have said they will not compete with. So to look at reality they will attempt to compete with the two largest airports carrying freight, that is Stanstead and the East Midlands, who between them carried just under 500,000 tonnes in 2012, equal to 21% of the total. Remember Heathrow carried 67% of the airfreight.

Now that only leaves 12% divided into every other airport in the UK.

In 2016 East Midlands carried 13%, Stanstead 9%, Manchester 4%, Gatwick 3% and Heathrow 65% Not a great deal left to share around  the 30 odd other airports.

What makes the situation even more perilous for a new player in the market is the way the market is now moving. Airfreight is up to 4x more expensive that lorry or sea freight so many freight forwarders are pulling out of the dedicated air freighter market to belly hold freight on passenger planes has meant that Freighter only movements have dropped.

In 2000 there were over 100,000 freighter Atms which declined to around 55,000 and has remained at that level whilst airfreight has remained fairly consistently around the 2,300,000 tonnes for more than 10 years. Proving that freight is transferring over to a more subsidised route. Heathrow expects this trend to continue and they expect to take more of this market in the future.

Much is made in the report done for RSP on why Manston is a good opportunity but neglects to explain how they would capture any of the Freighter only market when they were unable to capture more of the market when people actually used freighters to transport their goods and now that market has deteriorated by 40% they stand even less chance especially when Stanstead and East Midlands are spending money to expand their offering. They have a massive advantage being near the centre of the motorway network without the pinch point of the Dartford River crossing. Even Gatwick cannot compete as it is considered too far from the London Hubs.

The concentration of air freight (at Heathrow) presents a significant barrier to a newcomer trying to start from scratch in a declining market, especially when the major airports already have the cargo infrastructure in place with excess capacity still available.

addendum

More on the viability  http://promote-ramsgate.blogspot.com/2018/07/viability-of-manston.html

http://promote-ramsgate.blogspot.com/2017/08/is-reopening-manston-as-freight-hub.html

Viability of Manston

Following on from the last post the decision as to which option to choose still remains on whether there is evidence that an airport is viable at Manston up to the end of this Local Plan period which is 2031. The choice that Members at TDC have is option 1

This is the safer option according to officers but would still mean farmland being given over to land for housing. 1000 at Birchington, 1000 at Westgate and various other sites in Thanet along with 2500 on the brownfield site of the former Kent International Airport. Then there is Option 2

This option retains Manston as a brownfield site as currently there isn't a DCO in progress as it was withdrawn as failing to meet the requirements for a NSIP, but moves the housing to Birchington 1600, Westgate 2000, WX/Haine Road 1200 more ad other village sites.

TDC officers believe that there are risks in choosing this option primarily because there is no report on Manston written since 2014 that shows aviation being viable.

Since 2014 there have been 2 TDC reports about aviation and one TDC report about the finances of Riveroak. There has been a KCC report on viability, and 2 viability reports commissioned by Stone Hill Park the owners of the land. Here is a summary of them

For those with the perseverance here are the reports summarised in more detail

The first is the HM Government report into choosing increased capacity in the South of England and in which (despite the previous owners Infratil submitting a report) Manston effectively gets kicked into the long grass. The red is NNF's comments.

Then comes the Falcon report which said in summary that Manston would not be viable under any circumstance during the period 2014-2031 and during the period of consultation the airport closed with the loss of 144 jobs.

Next Riveroak tried to convince the administration (under Labour) to let them become a CPO partner and despite much handwringing TDC refused, The MP for North Thanet demanded Price Waterhouse Cooper conduct an examination of the process and despite some criticism of TDC found Riveroak to be unsuitable as a CPO partner

Kent County Council, who had paid out much tax revenue during the period 1998-2010 final washed their hands of Manston in March 2015 with this summary

In May of 2015 the local elections were dominated by the support for Manston with various parties saying "vote for me and we will reopen the airport" however many of the electorate being sceptical of politicians promises decided to give Chris Wells and the UKIP party and they duly swept to power.
Once hit by the reality of governing they realised that Riveroak were very poor and proving they were actually viable so Chris took the plunge and started the whole process again including a TDC sponsored report from Avia on the viability of aviation at Manston.

Because of the sensitive nature of the report from Avia the UKIP administration decided to ask for public responses and when these were received Avia were asked to produce a final assessment which was published in 2017

Riveroak had by this time decided to forego the CPO route and to use the more demanding DCO route and to argue that reopening Manston would be a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) and had commissioned Dr Sally Dixon to "prove" Manston was viable. This was done in a series of consultation exercises and reports however TDC can only use reports they themselves have commissioned. This means Sally Dixon's work cannot be used and neither can the following reports 2x SHP and one by No Night Flights as posted below.

Conclusion 

Bob Bayford and the Tory party should by rights only be making decisions on Land Use based on evidence however it appears that "But Airport" votes seem to be the deciding factor as on the 2nd July 2018 Cabinet endorsed Option 2. This will probably lead to the Ministry at examination finding the Local plan as unsafe.

York Aviation

Altitude Aviation's critique of Azimuth

And last but not least from the executive summary "No Room for Late Arrivals"

RSP open and transparent NOT

Well Riveroak Strategic Partners Ltd have provided a press release concerning their owners M.I.O Investments Limited and typically the ego stroking continues on SMAa however in the real world jaws have dropped and thoughts have turned to the scoring of their own goal. The press release is as follows:

"We share your determination! The creation of RiverOak Strategic Partners meets our long held commitment to have a UK operating company. Our investors are represented on the RSP board by Nick Rothwell, Rico Sykes and Gerard Heusler. M.I.O Investments Limited has been established by our investors as a specific funding vehicle for their financial interests in the Manston project, which is standard practice. M.I.O Investments Limited is a company registered in the Commonwealth territory of Belize.
We have provided all required details of our company ownership structure to Companies House and also informed the Planning Inspectorate of the creation of RSP. Additional, comprehensive details of our funding partners and investment arrangements will be provided to PINS as part of the DCO application, providing solid evidence of our ability to meet all of the financial obligations associated with the acquisition, reopening and operation of the airport"

So why Belize?

To repeat:
Belize offers a high degree of privacy. Belize will not disclose its banking or fiscal information to any foreign party.
No tax at all
No reporting requirements.

Well, Well, Well who owns MIO? Who knows.

What do governments say about Belize as a tax haven?

Link

What do TDC say about this? Well Chris Wells replied to an email by Andy McCulloch as follows:

On 30 Mar 2017, at 19:02, Andrew McCulloch wrote:
In view of the attached are you still willing to go along with the fiction that the DCO is unfunded and that RSP have no money?

Andrew McCulloch

  Dear Andrew

I understand Belize is one of 14 Caribbean nations named by the US as “major money laundering” countries in the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) released by the US State Department.


According to the report, a major money laundering country is defined as one “whose financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking”.
The report notes that Belize is not a major regional financial center but has a substantial offshore financial sector. It also notes that Belize is a transshipment point for marijuana and cocaine, and states that human trafficking is also a concern for the country.”

What else would you like us to note?

Regards

Chris Wells

 Further from the press release

comprehensive details of our funding partners and investment arrangements will be provided to PINS as part of the DCO application
 Logically this is difficult to understand because shrouding the ownership of RSP Ltd in Belize secrecy doesn't make sense if at the same time you are providing  "comprehensive details of our funding partners" to the Planning Authorities.

Consultations

One thing that marks out the difference between the Riveroak Campaign and the real owners of the former Kent International airport is the willingness of Mssrs Cartner & Musgrave to engage with the public.
Today and tomorrow are consultation periods put aside for talking with the people in the area. Even then some of the pro supporters turned up to have their say. Today the 3rd December was the turn of the Pegwell Bay hotel and 8 people turned up to protest. Yes that's right a whole 8 people.

Postem
"We've passed the 200 mark (for the two days) with 2.5 hours still to go on this, the second of this week's public consultation events"

Despite the success of the 2 days the propaganda machine by the unemployed mummy's boy Dan Light jumps into motion and he has to try and spin the success. Nonetheless he has been wasting his time as the majority of the people at the consultations were neutrals who came to see what the plans were all about.

Seems Dan will say anything to bolster their nasty campaign, still only one group will consider 8 people outside protesting when they have 9000+ members a success.

I'm sure they made a huge difference. Now down to business:

To summarise:

This looks like much more effort has gone into the protection of the natural chalk aquifer than when it was an airport as much of the area will be open access parkland with improved road access.

As the observant will notice the airport is only partly built over the main aquifer, In fact part of Nethercourt estate has actually been built on top of the aquifer and in fact Manston Green has been planned on top of the aquifer so housing development hardly seems to be an issue for the Environment Agency despite what the pro supporters might believe.