Location is a key driver to its growth strategy, and the integration of the Port of Liverpool and Manchester Ship Canal means that Peel Ports can offer a unique opportunity to drive transformational shift in the logistics of the UK. The integrated waterway, with 44 miles of waterfront, connects deep sea shipping services with inland water freight by barge – driving significant savings in supply chain costs, reducing the carbon footprint of UK logistics, and enabling a reduction in congestion of our UK road and rail systems.
Liverpool’s emphasises that its value proposition is about the UK supply chain and not about shipping. The word commonly used by the industry to describe the provision of distribution and other value-adding logistics services at a port is portcentric, but Liverpool now uses using the phrase “ship-to-door logistics.” The development of the deep water River Terminal at Liverpool, which will be operational in 2014, will more than double existing container capacity and allow additional global service calls to the North West of England. This development is key to Liverpool’s growth and is reflective of the industry shift and continued migration towards unitised cargo. To support the river terminal and facilitate truly multi-modal port and population centric logistics, Peel Ports is also investing in a number of developments along the Ship Canal – Port Bridgewater, Port Warrington and Port Salford. These inland terminals are strategically interconnected with the UK’s primary rail freight arteries and major motorways, with ten motorways within 10 miles of the waterway.
Paradigm shift
Over the last 20 years the pattern of UK container logistics has been mainly that container vessels arrive in the South and South East ports, and boxes are transported to and from delivery and pick up points by road or rail, with the Golden Triangle as the centre of distribution. This model of inland operations is now under serious review by many of the key container shipping players, and a paradigm shift is taking place. With vessel capacity heading towards 20,000 TEU on some trade lanes, ever higher fuel costs, increasing road and rail congestion and environmental pressures, the re-emergence of a North West/Central Gateway for “all water” services makes more sense than ever before. It is likely large container vessels will soon call at only three European ports and be linked to systems of 4000+ TEU supply chain vessels – both dedicated and multi-user. As these vessels grow in size, the unit slot cost benefits of import and export containers also improves. By adding reducing slot costs to lower “inland” costs, shorter distance travel and less hold ups, the cost benefit shows start to build. More and more customers are demanding CO2 reductions linked to distribution hub efficiency, and when the Port of Liverpool is then integrated with the “all water” Manchester Ship Canal, a new level of opportunities comes into focus. The benefits of the combined Port of Liverpool and Manchester Ship Canal operations are based upon hard facts in saving both cash and emissions.
Impressive figures
Liverpool’s figures are impressive. Last year 2010 saw the Port handle 11,011kT of liquids, 6,480kT of dry bulks, 490kT of general cargo, including steel and forest products, 4,909kT of containers (681,414 TEU) and 6,953kT of Ro-ro (716,503 units) – a grand total of 29,843kT. The first quarter of 2011 has seen an increase of 25% in trade, and further increases are expected in all sectors in the rest of the year. Much of this success is due to a huge commitment to growth and customer service through developing its operational people and processes, with the Port bringing together marine, terminal, engineering and systems teams into one wider-focused port operation. Peel Ports Mersey is now starting to further differentiate port operations and modal solutions within the UK sector through leveraging the advantages of integration of the Port of Liverpool and Manchester Ship Canal.
Substantial development
There has been substantial development of operational IT systems requirements at the container terminals, to obtain an “operational and customer led” solution. Huge technological strides were made to ensure not only immediate goals were met, but also a future-proof solution. This year Peel Ports Mersey has delivered a new TOS (Terminal Operating System) and G-POS (Global Positioning Optimisation System) real time location system for its fleet of straddle carriers and new quay cranes at its container terminal – which have realised significant benefits equating to a 22% increase in available stacking area and productivity enhancements of up to 20%. Investment in new mobile cranes has also brought that fleet up to eight in number. The result has been a 30% improvement in vehicle turnaround times and a significant uplift in container vessel performance. In turn this has significantly improved Peel Ports Mersey’s value offering.
Further system developments are now being finalised for non-containerised commodities, and this will see a further acceleration of IT support systems deployment in late 2011. This is on the back of SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) based instillations at the grain terminals and also lock gate marine systems, which have enhanced real time operational control and management systems within the Port’s facilities. These developments are and will continue to be fundamental to improving service levels and providing transparency to customers. The next step is to interface with customers’ systems and the wider supply chain, giving real time visibility of operation via web services over the internet. A customer portal launch in Q2 2011 now allows customers to see real time berthing, real time marine information and real time productivity in many of our terminals. In essence they will see what the Port sees. For the operations team, a multitude of operational solutions were required to further leverage growth and efficiencies. These included improving productivity and service performance, facilitating new ways of managing and organising and gaining competitive advantage. The aim is to achieve one fully-integrated “operational and customer led” solution that manages all of the resources, cost centres and service delivery in a complex environment – right first time, every time and above all continually improving. By making these changes and advances, Peel Ports Mersey is building a solid foundation to grow upon and support the strategic development of Liverpool’s post-Panamax River Terminal which will, when fully operational, operate with two deep sea container ship berths and nine quay cranes.