Expansion at Port of Tilbury located near the entrance to the River Thames is one of the core elements of the Port of London – which is currently enjoying a traffic boom with 2016 volumes up 11 % to exceed 50 mill. t for the first time since 2008
To cope with this growth Port of Tilbury has released outline plans to build a second terminal, Tilbury 2, which[ds_preview] will be used to expand capacity for breakbulk and project cargo.
The move follows last year’s acquisition by Forth Ports, owners of the port, of a 60-hectare site adjacent to its existing terminal. The site was formerly part of Tilbury Power Station, which was closed and decommissioned in 2013, and will now be remodeled to include a retained and improved deepwater jetty and new RoRo berth at an estimated cost of £ 100 million.
»We are acquiring this additional land to extend the port in response to increasing demand from customers who are seeking additional capacity within the port,« explained Forth Ports CEO Charles Hammond at the time.
In particular, Hammond referred to shippers wanting to load project cargo on a new link from Tilbury to the Middle East operated by the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (Bahri); previously UK cargoes for the service had to be transhipped via Antwerp.
Bahri’s regular liner service between NW Europe and the Middle East/India region uses a 2013-built fleet of flexible self-geared 26,000 dwt ConRo+ vessels designed for heavy, RoRo, project and containerised cargoes, each equipped with two 120t deck cranes. Port rotation is Jeddah, Tilbury, Bremerhaven, Antwerp, Bilbao, Port Said, Jebel Ali, Dammam, Jeddah.
Besides handling RoRo and project cargoes, the new Tilbury 2 is also intended to house extended premises for the London Construction Link (LCL), which will transfer from the existing terminal, thereby freeing up more space there for the Tilbury Container Terminal.
LCL was established as a joint venture with building group Walsh ahead of the 2012 London Olympics, to act as a consolidation area for construction-related materials arriving from overseas before onward delivery to their final destination in central London – by river barge wherever possible to avoid road congestion and CO2 emissions.
The Link has continued to do brisk trade ever since, with de-regulation of London planning laws under former London mayor Boris Johnson having led to a boom in the erection of high-rise office and residential buildings, with as many as 450 now under construction or planned.
»As London continues to grow, so Tilbury is growing – it is an absolute must,« says Perry Glading, chief operating officer of Forth Ports.
Tilbury is also the UK’s leading port for the import of both paper – for use mainly by the UK’s London-based newspaper and publishing industries – and forest products; Travis Perkins, the country’s leading building merchant, operates a special Distribution Centre for timber products at the 30-hectare London Distribution Park which lies just outside Port of Tilbury’s gates.
In addition, privately owned Seacon Group handles about 500,000t a year of compressed steel coils, structural steel, non-ferrous metals and forest products at its facilities at Tilbury, mostly brought in on its own mini-bulkers from North European ports.
In total Port of Tilbury currently has 34 berths and 7.5km of quayside located either side of the river, which receives over 3,000 ships carrying more than 16m tonnes of diverse cargo each year.
ED
