10


Issue 1 2013


Green light for new Liverpool terminal


Peel Ports has gained a Marine Management Organisation licence to build its Liverpool2 £300 million deep water container terminal in the River Mersey at Seaforth. Work would get under way in 2013, said the company. Managing director of Peel Ports


Mersey, Gary Hodgson, described the news as ”a fantastic boost not just for Peel Ports, but for the whole of the North West region. Liverpool2 is a transformational investment which will generate sustainable employment and prosperity across the region. The Government is crying out for private business to invest in new infrastructure to kick-start the economy and boost international trade, and there are few better examples of this than Liverpool2.” It follows the earlier news


that the port has achieved the necessary backing from banks and private investors


through


a refinancing deal that includes £150 million from the European Investment Bank. Chief financial


officer, Graeme Charnock, said: “The strong support we have received is testament to their confidence in the future plans of the Peel Ports Group. We have refinanced our existing facilities, and created a diversified and flexible funding platform to support our growth


strategy,


which includes the development of Liverpool2.” Peel Ports earlier announced


that it had completed a £1.6bn refinancing deal to fund its growth plans, including the Liverpool2 container port development. It has


raised the money from a variety of banks and private investors - including the £150 million from the European Investment Bank. Peel Ports is also investing £3


million in its steel terminal at Liverpool’s Gladstone dock. It gains the latest-generation CareGo warehouse optimisation and crane automation system and a fully automated warehouse and web portal, giving round-the- clock instant ordering. A vehicle booking system will minimise paperwork and haulier turn- around time. Customers will be


able to track their order real-time from ship to door and there will be an automatic weighing facility. Gary Hodgson said Liverpool


would be at the leading edge of steel storage and distribution and no other port in the UK is currently able to offer a comparable service, he claimed. The new terminal will be able


to store 350,000 tonnes of coils and there will be segregated storage and quarantine locations with dehumidification and temperature-controlled facilities. It opens for business in April 2013.


Forth Ports signs new Tilbury logistics park deal with Roxhill


Forth Ports has signed a deal with Roxhill Developments for a new joint venture to build the London Distribution Park (LDP) at its Port of Tilbury, near London. The specialist industrial development company has bought a 50% share in the development scheme from Forth Ports, and the two companies


will work closely


together to deliver the 70-acre development scheme just outside the port gates and less than seven miles of dual carriageway from the M25. The Park has outline planning permission for up to 940,000 square feet of B1, B2 and


B8 employment space –


mainly warehousing plus general industrial and office space. Infrastructure


construction


starts in early 2013 and buildings - on either a pre-let or pre-sale turnkey basis - could be occupied by the end of that year. The scheme’s proponents


say that it will allow enhanced port centric operations, limiting


the need for secondary inland warehousing and reducing carbon emissions, with rail, shiiping and barge services all available from Tilbury. Forth Ports says the venture is


the next phase in its expansion, following the £120m investment and upgrading of London Container Terminal in 2012. Roxhill’s managing director,


Jason Dalby, said the location “will appeal to occupiers who require sizeable buildings in an M25 location” coupled with the port’s multimodal opportunities. In an interview with FBJ, Forth chief operating


Ports’ officer


Perry Glading predicted that the new development would benefit from the London Gateway major port development a few miles upriver and that the two would complement rather than compete with each other. “What London Gateway does is bring attention to the Thames.”, he said. He predicted that Tilbury would


capture the port centric market in a very different segment. “They are developing units of up to half a million square feet; we are offering units in the 50,000-350,000sq ſt range.” There had been a fundamental


shiſt in the way imported goods were handled in the UK, Glading continued. “Increasingly, goods are not being delivered to the inland destination in containers, but


containers are being


offloaded in or close to the port, and warehousing now has to be flexible enough to cope with that.” Using a curtain-sided truck rather than a container made it easier to get a reload once the goods had been delivered to the inland destination and, increasingly, shipping lines wanted to get containers back on their ships as quickly as possible, he said. The new development would


add approximately 850,000sq ſt to Tilbury’s existing 5m sq ſt stock


of space and would offer higher quality, including features such as dock-levellers that until now had rarely been seen in UK port warehousing. The Roxhill joint venture –


the first the port of Tilbury has signed with a specialist property company – would also cater for pent-up demand for warehousing in the south east. Companies have tended to haul goods from southern ports up to the Midlands fore warehousing, only to bring it back south again to retailers because of a lack of storage space in the south. “There are no speculative build warehouses in the South-East at the moment, so I think we’ve identified a scarce resource,” said Glading. Outline planning permission has been obtained for the development and building work is expected to start in the second quarter of the year, with units available for occupation towards the end of 2013 or early 2014.


///NEWS


London Gateway lines up rail and road links


Roadways Container Logistics says that it plans to offer services at London Gatewaywhen it opens this year and will also provide inland rail terminals for operators using the new port. The haulier’s managing director,


Nick Matthews said: “Roadways will be running services from day one of operations for shippers choosing London Gateway and we want to show the industry that we are ahead of the game and acting now to capture that market. We see the future of logistics and shipping in the UK is at London Gateway.” General manager, Marc Wynne


added that the port would probably be served initially by Roadways’ existing operation in the area: “Setting up a depot at London Gateway is an option that


we will explore; we also have an existing base at Tilbury which is ideally situated to access all south eastern ports.” The number of trucks available


at the new port would “very much depend on our customers and their requirements. Detailed discussions will take place in the forthcoming months.” Nationally, Roadways operates over 300 vehicles he said. Roadways also operates two


rail terminals, at Manchester and Tamworth near Birmingham which currently receive five intermodal services per day from Felixstowe and Southampton ports. Earlier, train operator EWS


announced that it would provide rail connections to and from London Gateway.


New train set for Freightliner


Freightliner has taken delivery of its new ‘Shortliner’ wagons and has launched its first services with them. The 40ſt deck length, two platform wagons are more efficient because they minimise the amount of unused train space, increasing the number of 40ſt containers carried compared with a train of the old 60ſt wagons. Shortliner services of eight wagons


twin have started


running between Felixstowe and Manchester and at the time of writing, all trains have been full. Freightliner plans to complete its initial delivery of 86 platforms by the end of 2012 and the wagons will be used on routes with the greatest demand for additional


40ſt capacity. And on 23 November, rail wagon company VTG


hire officially


launched its own version of the wagon, branded the Ecofret, at the Roadways Logistics’ terminal in Tamworth. The wagon can carry 9ſt 6in high, 40ſt and 20ſt boxes on W10 gauge cleared routes and maximises the number of boxes that can be carried within a given train length. A ‘track friendly’ ride also reduce track access charges, adds VTG. The wagons come as either twin


or triple platforms and a train of 11 triples and 2 twin platforms can carry 37 40ſt boxes in a 512 metre long train - a 32% improvement over the existing Megafret wagons.


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