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TWST: How would you summarize Associated British Ports' (London: ABP.L) overall strategy for the next couple of years? What objectives will you be aiming for?

Mr Lerenius: Summarizing our strategy, consistency is a good way to describe it. We’re clearly going to stick to our existing strategy. But, in addition to us growing our ports, getting new customer contracts and new business into our ports, there are also a number of major new projects in the pipeline for the business. Up in the Humber on the east coast where we have two of our major ports – Immingham, which is the biggest port in the UK, and Hull on the northern side of the Humber -- we are now successfully developing further out in to the river. Those ports used to historically run inside locks, which limits the ship size that you could accommodate. We’re now moving those successfully with a couple of new terminals we’ve opened in the last two years in to the river, thus allowing us to handle bigger ships and to achieve quicker turnaround times. And, by that we can attract some new trades that we couldn’t attract earlier. We also have substantial land for further development and more capacity. We also have the opportunity of building four further major river terminals on the Humber. If we build all those, that’s 140 – 150 million pounds of capex. But, we’re not going to build any of them unless we have customers for them. The first one in the pipeline, which is a new coal terminal, we’re now negotiating with three customers. We’re in long gone talks with these customers and we hope to sign an agreement to build that new coal terminal in the second half of this year. This means that, on the back of these customer contracts, we will build that facility which will become operational during 2004, and that is a 42 million pound investment. So that’s a major growth project. And, as I said, there are three more in the pipeline but we need permission for those, which is not an immense process but it’s still going to take a bit of time. We’re not negotiating with customers until we have these necessary permissions, but clearly there’s big growth potential in our Humber ports. And then we have one other major new potential project. We are now seeking permission from the Government to build a new container port opposite Southampton at Dibden Bay. We’re in the middle of a public inquiry on that and we believe that we will have a decision from the Government sometime during the second half of next year. On balance, we hope to get the permission. The same thing applies there, that we are currently talking to customers now and we’re going to build this by dedicating berths to respective customers. We’re not going to build anything unless we have customers. It would be phased out over a number of years because as I say you build it berth by berth. But that is a 600 million pound investment. So assuming we can get the customers, with all those berths, this is obviously a very big project.

TWST: What is the summary message, the three or four key points, you would like investors to take into consideration?

Mr Lerenius: In the present economic situation, I think our strategy is proving itself. We are the only ports company in the UK that is growing our operating profit in the first half of this year. I think that proves the point of our strategy and I would say, if we stick to our strategy, we’re going to continue to grow in a relatively high-returning, very controlled, very resilient, very visible way. We’re not going to do foolish things and take risks. You don’t make money on headlines, as they say. It is all about consistency and you could almost call it a conservative strategy, but I think this is the way to run a ports company.