Containers herald growth at Teesport
TEESPORT will welcome its second new container shipping service in as many months, as it prepares for the announcement of what are expected to be record volumes when official traffic statistics are released on June 10.
Northern European short sea shipping company Unifeeder said it was launching three new services to the UK from next month, including Teesport.
The company, which has recently expanded its Baltic operations and handles 1.6m of the larger containers on which Teesport’s future development is largely underpinned, said it would be providing “significant annual capacity from the start” with several weekly arrivals.
Its expansion into the UK was a “major and strategically important decision”, the company added.
“The new service brings new opportunities to link existing destinations in Scandinavia and around the Baltic Sea to the UK.”
PD Ports is likely to hit its ambitious target for growing container shipping volumes by 40% this year, and is preparing to release a new strategy for consolidating its lead in container shipping market.
Although Q1 traffic figures, due to be published by the Department of Transport on June 10 will show a dip in bulk movements as a result of a downturn in the steel and chemical businesses on which the port has traditionally been dependent, a significant rise in the handling of higher value consumer goods is likely to offset the losses.
The port’s success in attracting some of the world’s biggest container shipping services has been largely based on its flexibility as an operator and its integrated Portcentric logistic package.
The arrival of big shed distribution centres for Asda in 2008 followed by Tesco and Taylors of Harrogate last year and improvements in quayside handling capacity has all added to its reputation as the port of choice for customers targeting consumer markets in the North of England.
The more business it attracts, the faster it will be able to progress its £300m plans for a deep sea container terminal, which are said to have the wholehearted support of new owners Brookfield Asset Management - the Canadian-owned development company with more than half a billion of assets already in the North-east.
Last month, Samskip said it was to introduce a weekly Teesport to Zeebrugge service and
