Following the Government green light to build wind farms off UK shores, PD Ports is delighted to see Dogger Bank was one of the Crown Estate’s confirmed winners of round three - the process for leasing UK waters for offshore wind farms.
Hartlepool is ideally located to serve the Dogger Bank area of the North Sea, which is a substantial site stretching 260km in length and only 100km off the North East coast.
PD Ports’ Hartlepool facility has excellent potential to link in to the Government’s future offshore wind farm agenda and is especially well placed to capitalise on the associated new engineering jobs and economic benefits over the next 5 to 10 years.
JDR Cables Ltd, one of the leading players in the provision of subsea power cables established a state of the art 100,000 sq ft facility on PD Ports land at Hartlepool in July 2009. PD Ports is already in negotiations with JDR Cables to extend this facility to cope with demand. PD Ports is also the UK home to Heerema, which has successfully serviced offshore related industries from Hartlepool for over 15 years.
Offshore wind farm projects demand vast areas of land for assembly and manufacture of turbines due to the sheer scale of the structures involved. Victoria Harbour, an area of land owned by PD Ports that links the Headland and the marina in Hartlepool, provides a prime opportunity to support the delivery of such new port-related industries and act as a home for expanding engineering companies.
Victoria Harbour, which was previously considered as a potential mixed use site with a significant residential housing element, will enable PD Ports to further expand to meet growing demand and secure new job opportunities.
Michael McConnell, Group Director of Property at PD Ports, said: “PD Ports sees significant opportunities for further developing Hartlepool as a major player in the offshore support sector, which could bring sustained economic growth and jobs to the town.
“Our site at Hartlepool has enormous potential and there will be a number of exciting opportunities going forward.”
Richard Buckley, Director of Development at Tees Valley Regeneration, said: “After lengthy discussions between partners and PD Ports, it was clear that the future focus for Victoria Harbour should be one of economic development and job creation.
The region is already in a prime position to take advantage of the offshore wind sector, with the New and Renewable Energy Centre (Narec) working with global turbine, blade and electrical infrastructure manufacturers on their development programmes.
David Cramond, One North East Director of Capital Development, said: “In the current climate it is vital that we focus on projects that have economic development at their heart and Hartlepool is already benefiting from new investment from offshore wind.”
The UK Government is committed to raise the proportion of energy derived from renewable sources from 2.4 per cent to 15 per cent by 2020. To achieve this aim over 6000 turbines will be built and installed in nine different offshore fields around the coast of Britain. The largest of these nine fields will be at Dogger Bank.
About PD Ports:
PD Ports Limited is owned by Canadian based Brookfield. Brookfield is a global asset manager focused on property, renewable power and infrastructure assets, with over $90 billion of assets under management. PD Ports was bought by Brookfield in November 2009.
PD Ports is a high performing specialist ports business offering a wide variety of supply chain services to improve customers’ international product and material movements into and out of – as well as within – the UK.
PD Ports employs over 1140 members of staff, and generates an annual turnover of over £120 million from many UK locations.
PD Ports operates throughout the UK from bases at many key ports and logistics centres.
The 3 business interests of PD Ports are:
Port Operations– is split into two business streams – bulks and unitised and includes:
Teesport: one of the top 3 UK ports, with flows of containers, bulk traffics and finished cars, handling over 40 million tonnes of throughput p.a.
Humber & Small Ports: owners and/or operators of ports on the Humber estuary, Rivers Trent and Ouse, and at Medina Wharf, Isle of Wight. Service offerings include ships’ agency, chartering and stevedoring services.
Logistics: PD Logistics offers warehousing and distribution services at UK locations throughout the North East, Humberside & East Anglia, including at Felixstowe. Please visit www.pdlogistics.com
Development plans for Port Operations include:
The Northern Gateway Container Terminal: a major new deep sea container terminal planned at Teesport on the South side of the River Tees. The £300+ million development will have a capacity of 1.5 million TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit) and is anticipated to deliver over 5,500 jobs to the Tees Valley, when fully operational. Please visit www.thenortherngateway.co.uk
Portcentric Logistics: a new concept promoted by PD Ports for locating the storage and distribution of imported goods close to the point of arrival at a UK port. This concept avoids the slow handling and return of empty containers as well as eradicating unnecessary UK road mileage, which occurs when delivering to a traditional inland import centre, such as in the Midlands.
In 2006 ASDA Wal*Mart opened a 360,000 sq ft import centre at Teesport and has saved more than 2 million road miles by adopting the portcentric concept. Adjacent to the ASDA facility, Tesco operates a purpose built 1.2 million sq ft import centre at Teesport, which opens in 2009
Conservancy – this includes:
Management of river traffic for the ports of Tees and Hartlepool, ensuring safe navigation and maintaining the required channel depth.
Property– this includes:
Revenue and income from property and facilities owned by PD Ports and used by third party clients on long term leases.
Land that is not utilised for operational purposes and offers potential for development.
Port land at Hartlepool docks, which is highly attractive to the growing renewable energy sector, including offshore, windfarms, and biomass plants. PD Ports’ long term strategy is to further develop Hartlepool docks as a centre of excellence for the offshore support sector.
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