In Teesport, on the North East coast of England, they have started work on doubling the container capacity. This will ultimately be almost 450,000 TEU. During the first phase, the site will be increased by 5 hectares and new container cranes will be brought in. Later expansions depend on how the market develops. Owner PD Ports is investing an initial € 18 million in the project.
Teesport/Teesside (the larger area on both banks of the river) is an important business relation for the port of Rotterdam. In addition to containers, it is a source of and destination for chemicals, granules, oil products, biofuels and maybe steel too in the future.
Containers and logistics
The two ports are linked to each other by 6 container services a week, operated by Samskip, Feederlink, BG Freight (2x) and Unifeeder (2x). Last year, container throughput in Teesport increased by 45% to 150,000 TEU. The port manager is conducting a successful strategy to attract distribution centres for intercontinental goods for large retail chains such as Tesco, ASDA*WalMart and the coffee maker Taylors of Harrogate. In this way, they avoid long journeys – right across greater London – from the ports in South East England to the sizable Central English market. Logically, the centres also attract extra continental cargo.
Bio-energy
In addition to logistics activities, the development of bio-energy must also create new jobs following the shrinking of production at Tata Steel and the closure of the Petroplus refinery. On the north bank, ConocoPhilips has a storage and processing terminal for crude oil and Vopak has a tank terminal. This is used to store, among other things, bio-ethanol from the plant, with a capacity of 400,000 tonnes, which Ensus opened there in 2009. Some of the ethanol is bought by a refinery in Rotterdam. Also, a little further upstream, a 49MW bio-energy power plant is being developed, as well as a waste-based biofuel plant by Ineos Bio. This is scheduled for the Wilton chemical complex, which is home to Huntsman, Invista, Dupont, Dow and Uniqema.
[mappress]
Source: portofrotterdam, February 22, 2011