DP World, the world’s fourth-largest port operator and the owner of P&O, gave warning yesterday that the strong pound was set to trigger a shipping crisis in the UK “within months” that would lead to congestion for carriers seeking to import goods, The Times has learnt.

The company said that the situation would deteriorate further within two to three years, when it expects “a tsunami” of international freight to clog some of Britain’s biggest ports.

Michael Moore, a senior vice-president of DP World, said yesterday that freight volumes since the beginning of the year had risen by 15 per cent compared with the same period in 2005.

The squeeze is being felt in Southampton, where AB Ports, the operator, said that queueing was common for vessels entering the port. “Lorries have to book to enter the port to collect or deliver containers,” a spokesman said.

Mr Moore attributed the increased traffic to the strength of the pound, which has made foreign goods far cheaper, and to the low price of manufactured goods from Eastern Europe and the Far East. He said: “Britain is going to have some real port problems this summer. We are already in talks with carriers to see if there are ways of increasing the efficiency of our processes to boost throughput but the problem is that soon there will be very little latent capacity.”

Planning delays have held up the development of new port capacity in Britain. DP World is hoping to build London Gateway, a £1.5 billion deep-water container port at Shell Haven on the Thames Estuary. DP World has received “minded to approve” letters from the Government and talks are continuing.

London Gateway will have capacity for 3.5 million containers, but the first ships are not expected before 2010. When P&O Ports proposed the project, it was envisaged that the first containers would unload in 2006.

Other projects have suffered outright refusals, notably Dibden Bay, a plan to expand Southampton’s container terminal, which was rejected by the Government in 2004.

Mr Moore said: “Of course, there are always other options. Carriers could go to Rotterdam or Antwerp or relay goods to smaller ports within the UK, but this is less efficient and will add on cost to the consumer.”

A Department for Transport official said that it was unaware of other operators making such claims. “The department has already consented to additional capacity in Felixstowe South, Bathside Bay and Mersey, and applications for London Gateway, Teesport and Bristol are at various stages in the planning process,” the official said. “It is now up to the market to provide the capacity as it sees fit and manage the capacity that it already has.”

Global trade is growing at between 10 per cent and 12 per cent a year, but Mr Moore said that port capacity was not increasing at the same rate. He pointed out that more than 90 per cent of traded goods were transported by sea.

Another DP World spokesman said: “When you’re working with existing facilities it is still very difficult to expand capacity.”

DP World is wholly owned by an investment vehicle of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai. It bought P&O in November 2005 for £3.3 billion.

A dispute broke out in February last year between DP World and Washington over the sale of American ports to a foreign company. Some feared that a transfer of control of key assets, such as the ports of New York and Baltimore, could compromise US security. It was forced to sell the American ports. DP World owns 42 marine terminals in 22 countries.

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