Calf exporters are increasingly concerned that exports of dairy bull calves to EU markets will be curtailed next spring because there isn’t enough lairage capacity at Cherbourg.

Calves are due for feeding and 12 hours rest soon after disembarking at the French port. The two approved lairages at Cherbourg have capacity for 4,000 calves – the equivalent of 12 or 13 large, modern calf trucks. This is adequate for most of the year.

However, during the peak export weeks in March/April, exporters could occasionally want to send up to 20 trucks on a sailing. This can arise if stormy sea conditions mean no calf trucks go on one sailing – a higher than usual number will then look for space on the next one.

On previous such occasions, any Irish trucks unable to book into a Cherbourg lairage drove to the next one, at Abbeyville.

But the Department of Agriculture is no longer allowing this. Department veterinary officials now won’t give a travel certificate for calves unless the exporter has documentation confirming space booked at a Cherbourg lairage.

When the Department advised exporters of these tighter rules, earlier this year, it said it would seek new arrangements to avoid exports being curtailed at peak time. However, exporters say there has been no resolution and calving is now just weeks away.

The Department has told exporters that there will be two new sailings from Dublin to Cherbourg which it hopes will carry calf trucks and that this could help.

But additional sailings to Cherbourg would only help if arriving on different days to the existing Rosslare sailings. That would spread out demand for lairage capacity at Cherbourg.

In any case, it now appears that these new sailings will not start until May, at which stage the flush of calf exports will have passed.

Arrangements

One exporter said that the Irish, French and EU authorities must make arrangements to allow Irish calves access EU markets. Irish farmers and exporters have greater difficulty operating within EU transport rules than their counterparts elsewhere in the EU. They have to work around rigid ferry timetables, limited ferry and lairage capacity and reliance on just one route to market. Exporters on the continent have motorway routes and fewer logistical problems.