Finnish Ambassador for the UK visits Teesport

Sept. 2, 2011 - PRLog -- The Finnish Ambassador for the UK on Wednesday visited PD Ports owned Teesport, to see the facility’s latest cranes, purchased from a Finnish manufacturer.

As part of his tour of north-east England and Edinburgh, Ambassador Pekka Huhtaniemi visited the port with his wife, Liisa Huhtaniemi, met with senior port officials and was taken on a tour of the dock estate and shown around the port on a launch boat.

Mr Huhtaniemi then viewed the four new RTG (rubber-tyred gantry) cranes delivered to Teesport on 18 August.

The Ambassador and his wife were joined by PD Ports’ CEO David Robinson, Olwyn Peters, Mayor of Redcar and Cleveland, and executives from port agency GAC World, shipping line Containerships and crane manufacturer Konecranes.

“Teesport is clearly a great logistics hub in north-east of England,” says Huhtaniemi. “Konecranes has shown what Finland can deliver in terms of high-tech industry, as have the other Finnish firms with a presence at Teesport - Containerships and chemical storage firm Kemira.

“My port tour has also highlighted the important trade links between the UK and Finland and I have seen that north-east England is one place in the UK where Finnish and British trade is flourishing.”
           
The £5 million Konecranes RTGs, manufactured in Finland and Poland, are the first of their type to be supplied by the company in the UK and allow PD Ports to significantly improve handling capacity on the Teesport Container Terminal as volumes continue to grow.

The cranes are a key component of the current £16.7million expansion of the container terminals at Teesport and represent the biggest single equipment investment in the port since the container terminal opened in 2003.

Teesport’s container terminals saw volumes increase by 45% in 2010 and capacity is currently being expanded from 235,000 to 450,000 TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit, the standard measurement for sea containers).

The Ambassador’s tour also includes meetings and visits covering local government, business, culture and heritage, and he will meet Finnish people living and working locally.

Ends

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 $100 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 1200 members of staff, and generates an annual turnover of over £115 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:
o   Port Operations– is split into two business streams – bulks and unitised and includes:

   Teesport: one of the top 4 UK ports, with flows of containers, bulk traffics and finished cars, handling almost 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, recycling and distribution services at UK locations throughout the North East, Humberside & East Anglia, including at Felixstowe.
 
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. Circa 1,300 of the 5,500 new jobs have already been created through portcentric logistics operations in the past four years.

•   Portcentric Logistics: a 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 WalMart opened a 360,000 sq ft import centre at Teesport and has saved more than 8 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 opened in 2009. Tea and coffee specialists Taylors of Harrogate opened a purpose built warehouse facility at Teesport Commerce Park on the periphery of Teesport in 2010 to handle its UK imports.

o   Conservancy – this includes:

   Management of river traffic for the ports of Tees and Hartlepool, ensuring safe navigation and maintaining the required channel depth.  
o   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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