PD Ports appoints Infinity as Far East representative
PD Ports has signed a major, forward-looking deal to help develop its deepsea container business coming from the Far East. In late December, PD Ports' senior managers visited Singapore and Malaysia in order to complete the signing of Infinity as the ports' representative in the important South East Asia market.
 Speaking from Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, where the ink was still wet on an agreement that could bring some of the world's biggest ships to Teesside, PD Ports Director Martyn Pellew said: "Malaysia and its neighbours Thailand, Laos and Cambodia are a key region for building traffic with the tiger economies of China and India. Malaysia and Singapore see vast numbers of containers transhipped at their major ports, as well as a strong stream of locally produced exports moving to the same ports destined for the wealthy consumer markets of Northern Europe.
"There are a number of ports here expanding their capacity to handle transhipments from China and India. It is that traffic destined for the retailers and consumers of northern Britain that we are after. One port in the south of Malaysia that we visited is dealing with as many containers a day as the whole of the UK. This port alone has an incredible ambition. It plans to expand to handle up to 70 million teu (twenty foot equivalent unit) of containers a year and all vessels of the largest new generation of container ships. Today the whole of Europe only handles about 75 million teu per year."
Mr Pellew said the signing ceremony in Kuala Lumpur involved the Malaysian Department of Transport and locally based representatives from the UK Trade and Industry team. The atmosphere at the ceremony had been given a major boost by Middlesbrough FC's recent win over Arsenal: "The Malaysians are football mad, so it was the best possible news we could have had to coincide with our week long visit. We are on a mission to raise awareness of Teesport, and Boro's result did more for that than I could have done in a week!"
Malaysian-based freight forwarding company Infinity runs local and long-distance road vehicles and Intermodal trains to meet vessels from South East Asia on their way to Europe and America. Infinity will now act as PD Port's agent for the region.
"We signed an agreement in front of 250 people from the shipping world. This is an important first step towards developing an awareness that UK bound traffic can go through Teesport," said Mr Pellew. "There's no point us building a £300million container port on Teesside, to be known as the Northern Gateway Container Terminal (NGCT), if no one knows about it. Today, these manufacturers can only use Teesport for container freight traffic coming on smaller feeder ships through Rotterdam or Zeebrugge, but in two or three years' time after our build programme, they can come direct."
Also in December The Grand Alliance (GA) of leading container shipping lines said it was boycotting the UK's southeast ports because of congestion. From now on, GA goods destined for the UK will instead be shipped to northern mainland European ports and transferred on to smaller feeder vessels that can access the Northeast's ports such as Teesport. Importers will have to pick up the extra shipping costs of a second sailing, but will save on expensive reduced inland UK road and rail distances in order to get goods onto store shelves in the likes of Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Glasgow.
"The fact that GA has said they are no longer going to use Felixstowe or Southampton very strongly supports our bid for building a deep sea container port in the North-east," said Mr Pellew. He added that oceangoing freight was growing by more than 10% a year. Asda has already consolidated its general merchandise Far Eastern imports at Teesdock, and another major UK retailer is expected to move into Teesport during 2008 following an application to build another retail import distribution centre, over three times the size of Asda's current 350k sq ft facility adjacent to the docks.
About the outstanding planning application for the new NGCT terminal with 1.5m teu capacity, Mr Pellew commented: "Christmas is coming, but there's still no news from the Department of Transport. I know of no reason why we should not get approval through now or at worst early in the new year."
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For further information please contact:
PD Ports
Martyn Pellew
Group Development Director
Tel: 01642 877200
www.pdports.co.uk |
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