H20 vital for Heathrow
Water proved a vital element in serving the Heathrow Terminal 5 construction site. Aggregates were transported to the site via the waterways and this was a project in which the River Medway also played an important part; Mittal Kent Wire at its Chatham Docks terminal handled the import of 70,000 tonnes of reinforcing bar which was railed direct to Heathrow Airport, and clearly the opportunities are similar.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that only the largest container terminals can achieve productivity rates of more than 30 moves per crane hour, while even they require major box exchanges per ship call in order to do so. Even fairly busy import/export facilities often struggle to post anything better than 25 moves per crane hour. At the bottom end of the scale, feeder ports have traditionally struggled to maintain high productivity levels, pleading calls from small vessels generating modest box exchanges as the main mitigating factor.
“We are optimistic about the Olympics, ” says Kent Wire’s Gary Rosewell. “Being a sea port with rail, we believe we can win orders because other cargoes can go straight to the sites without ever seeing the road.”
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CONTAINER & CARGO HANDLING
CONTAINER & CARGO HANDLING