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Issue 6 2019 - Freight Business Journal


///UK NORTH EAST


All fine on the Tees and Tyne The North-East of England is on the threshold of a shipping and logistics boom.


Teesside set for airport renaissance


A thriving region needs a thriving air gateway, says Tees Valley head of airport development Phil Forster. “Airports aren’t just for people fl ying off on holiday,” he told a Multimodal seminar on the region. “It’s also about how people come into and access the region.” Tees Valley has taken the


unusual step of buying back Teesside Airport from its private sector owners and is now redeveloping it in partnership with Eddie Stobart. While best known as a transport and logistics fi rm, Stobart is also a successful airport operator,


having turned Southend into a thriving gateway and reopened the closed Carlisle airport. While Teesside Airport was


once a thriving place, handling over a million passengers a year,


numbers have dwindled


plus freight, passenger to


around 150,000 and there are few scheduled services. However, the airport has a


lot going for it. As well as direct access to the A19 trunk road, it boasts one of the longest runways in the country and, perhaps most signifi cantly of all, around 819 acres of developable land. The area has already


been strongly tipped for one of Amazon’s giant distribution centres. The airport’s renaissance is


part of a wider regeneration of


Teesside, Tees Valley


Combined Authority Mayor Ben Houchen told the a seminar at the Multimodal show on 19 June. “For years, Tees Valley has played second fi ddle to Newcastle, but the new mayoral system has allowed us to break free,” he said. His role as mayor was to talk to potential investors and he would be able to give them the assurance that regulatory, planning and other


Teesport looks forward to a diverse future


Only fi ve years ago, Teesport was handling 3 million tonnes a year of steel slab and associated products, traffi c that stopped virtually overnight when the local steelworks closed down. But it’s a tribute to the port’s resilience and entrepreneurial spirit that around 2m tonnes of that business has been replaced and that the new traffi c is,


moreover, much more diverse and fi nancially attractive, says Jerry Hopkinson, chief operating offi cer and vice chairman of the owner and operator, PD Ports. “There has been quite a radical


restructuring of the business,” he told FBJ. “For example, we took the old steel export terminal that we’d acquired from British Steel when the steel slab operation


ceased and converted it to handle free-fl owing bulks.” The old steel business may


not quite have been replaced in sheer tonnage terms, but as Hopkinson says, “we in the ports industry always tend to talk about tonnages but it’s really about the quality of earnings, blue chip companies and long- term business.”


The range of traffi cs handled


at Teesport is much wider than it was fi ve years ago, and there are many more exciting


developments in the pipeline. For example, the port doesn’t handle any biomass at the moment, but that will change when a new


issues would be sorted out; he was a catalyst for growth and investment. The airport, which has been


known as Durham Tees Valley for the past few years, reverted to its former name Teesside, on 25 July, a move to mark its renaissance. In an interview with FBJ on


24 July, Phil Forster said: “This is not just about an airport and a runway – it’s also about 819 acres of developable land.” Teesside airport’s surface


access is excellent, he pointed out, with two major trunk routes close by, and with the East Coast main line rail route within six miles. The airport is also adjacent to the Darlington-Middlesbrough


line


and indeed there is a station called Teesside Airport close by, though it currently only has


a token service of one train a week – something Forster and the Mayor hope to remedy fairly soon.


Airport development does


tend to be a chicken-and-egg aff air – without other operators there, carriers can be reluctant to commit to new services, but Teesside does have one of the longest runways in the country. Forster’s vision is for the


north side of the airport to be developed as a business park, hotel and training academy but the south side has great potential as a logistics hub.


“It’s already


generating a lot of interest from people like logistics companies,” says Forster. An access road to the south side would need to be built but this is being actively pursued, he adds. Flown freight from Teesside is currently at a very low ebb,


but if a long haul bellyhold


carrier could be attracted it could transform its fortunes -


as Emirates has shown at


Newcastle. The other potential business are full freighters. In fact, full freighters could be one of the fi rst traffi c streams to be revived, says Forster. Teesside already has a cargo


terminal. The main user is TNT, though currently only for its road operations. KLM also operates frequent passenger fl ights to Schiphol and there are a couple of holiday charter airlines. Other areas to be explored are


synergies with Teesport and the port-centric logistics concept espoused by PD Ports and, possibly, inclusion in Teesport’s mooted freeport – something else the Mayor is also very keen on.


power station starts operation on a 35-acre site behind the former steel export terminal. The largest biomass-burning plant in the world, it will ship in feedstock from North America in handymax or panamax sized vessels which will be unloaded by the very latest screw dischargers. The whole operation will be weather protected with sophisticated heat and spark detection systems in place to ensure safety. “It really is a world away


from the sorts of stevedoring


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