Cyber-style UK domination
Felixstowe's robots give muscle to the UK port's quest for supremacy
Felicity Landon reports on a bit of a Doctor Who moment on the quayside at Felixstowe.
As Hutchison Ports UK celebrated the Port of Felixstowe’s 125th anniversary and the opening of the port’s new deepwater berths, some unlikely characters took centre stage on the pristine yard behind Berths 8&9.
First, ‘dock workers’ emerged from terminal tractors, morphed into acrobats and somersaulted across the quayside. Well, it was the lack of hard hats that gave them away, many pointed out. Next, some alarmingly large robots emerged from strategically placed containers and proceeded to entertain the party guests.
What was the message? World domination cyberman-style? Well, UK domination, anyway. The management team at Felixstowe could be forgiven for feeling a little pleased with themselves. Just a few hours earlier, Princess Anne had performed the official opening of the only UK berths capable of accommodating the world’s largest containerships. Felixstowe is already the UK’s largest container port by far, and this expansion will create 1,500 new jobs, says HPUK.
“In one sense, Berths 8&9 are simply the latest chapter in the port’s 125-year history, which has been one of constant developments,” says HPUK chief executive David Gledhill. “Felixstowe has been the clear leader of container terminal development in the UK and this latest project reinforces that position. In the 1980s Felixstowe was one of the first in the world to order the new post-panamax cranes – 16 boxes wide, which was phenomenal then.
“We were among the first to order 22-wide cranes, and then the first to order the massive 24-wide cranes for Berths 8&9 – their combination of height and outreach remains unique and they are truly the largest of their type in the world.”
Felixstowe is the only UK terminal able to handle the world’s largest containerships [and that extends to Maersk’s upcoming 18,000 teu Triple-E class], Mr Gledhill emphasises. “It isn’t just a concept or Powerpoint presentation; it is built, it is finished and it is now open today, not at some indeterminate point in the future.”
Not, he emphasised to a good deal of laughter, that he was “having a dig at anyone particular”.
There were mutterings about the absence of a government minister at the proceedings – no one could be spared, it was understood. But no doubt the presence of both business secretary Vince Cable and shipping minister Mike Penning at the London Gateway site less than a week later will have been noted. They were on the Thames for DP World’s announcement that the London Gateway will finally open in the fourth quarter of 2013.
HPUK instead welcomed Lin Homer, permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, who was on home territory as former chief executive of Suffolk County Council. She had praise for HPUK for its forward thinking, adaptability and flexibility, and the way in which it has worked with environmental groups to move plans forward in an “extraordinarily sensitive landscape”.
“This major investment shows that Britain is open for business,” she said.
Felixstowe had the foresight to see in the 1960s that the container was the way of the future, said Ms Homer. “The way of the future is super box ships. And you have got there ahead of the game.”
Before she spoke, there were several references to the plodding UK planning system and Ms Homer suggested that she had been invited as a “token member of the civil service so that everyone can throw tomatoes at me”.
“We do have to work hard and collaborate to get major projects through this system,” she said. “The government is looking at what we can do differently.”
Berths 8&9 provide 730 metres of quay; depth alongside is 16 metres and is capable of being increased to 18 metres. The total terminal area is 35.87 hectares, enough to store 20,000 teu at 100% capacity.
“And it doesn’t stop there,” says Mr Gledhill. “We will expand that to nearly 1,300 metres with Berth 10 and when that is completed we will have a total 13 of the world’s largest gantry cranes. Beyond that we have Bathside Bay, where we already have consent to build another terminal of a very similar scale.”
The ever-increasing size of ships and particularly the rapidly increasing number of those ships on the Asia-Europe run makes this new facility ‘absolutely essential’, he added.
He paid tribute to Hutchison for going ahead with the development in the face of the global economic slowdown: “Thanks to them for backing the management team in Felixstowe and putting their money where their mouth is by sticking to this investment when many others were putting theirs on the backburner.”
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