The planned expansion of Southampton’s container terminal will help cement it’s reputation as one of the fastest, most productive freight terminals in the UK.
With the mega vessels arriving in Southampton getting bigger and bigger, Southampton’s freight terminal are scaling up to match. DP World Southampton are investing heavily in new equipment, land and quayside cranes. This increase in capacity is great news for the local freight industry, and will only help to improve the speed and productivity of the Southampton Terminal, which is already widely regarded as one of the best in the country. The terminal recently acquired an additional 11.2 acres of land at the north east edge of the terminal, creating 640 extra ground spaces to store containers and bringing the size of the terminal to almost 100 hectares. As well as creating more container capacity, the 11.2 acres supports operations at SCT 5 – the freight terminal’s newest and largest deep-water berth, which opened in March 2014. The new land behind this berth enables shorter run distances for straddle carriers taking containers to and from the stack, improving productivity overall. Nick Loader, Chief Executive Officer, DP World Southampton, said:“Container ships are getting bigger all the time. The 11.2 acres of new land will allow us to increase the utilisation of SCT 5. It will also help us to be much more efficient so that DP World Southampton can continue to load and unload vessels faster than any other container terminal in the UK. Our customers tell us that we are the most productive terminal in the UK and we intend to stay that way.”The terminal operator’s expansion plans also include: • Investment in 17 new straddle carriers, being manufactured by Kalmar in Poland, to replace older equipment and bring DP World Southampton’s fleet more up to date. • The purchase of a two additional new super post-panamax cranes scheduled for delivery in early 2018. The size of container ships importing and exporting goods around the world has nearly doubled in just under 10 years. The world’s largest container ships regularly call at DP World Southampton including the MSC Diana at 19,462 TEU. However, there are already 21,000 TEU vessels on order for delivery during 2017. The growth of the Southampton freight terminal will help to future proof it for dealing efficiently with increasingly larger vessels, which is great news for Supreme Freight as one of the major freight forwarding companies in the area. Feel free to get in touch to see how this could effect your freight requirements.