PD Ports Promotes Portcentric At Multimodal 2011

Online, March 30, 2011 (Newswire.com) - PD Ports and PD Logistics are exhibiting at Multimodal 2011, taking place at the NEC, Birmingham, 5-7 April. They are promoting the group's full range of ports and logistics services, including its highly-acclaimed portcentric strategy.

Paul Barker, Development Director bulk, ports and logistics, will be presenting an advice-led tutorial on portcentric logistics at the Shippers' Voice seminar on Thursday 7th April 11.30 - 12.15. Mr Barker will explain how adopting a 'portcentric' strategy - storing goods close to the port of import and distributing locally - works well for both niche players and large retail clients.

Portcentric customers include both ASDA and Tesco, which have established import centres at Teesport, and Taylors of Harrogate, which has moved all its tea and coffee imports to a specially built warehouse there after trials proved the service to be both cost-effective and environmentally-friendly.

PD Ports Group, which includes the ports of Teesport and Hartlepool as well as activities at various other UK ports including Hull, Felixstowe and Immingham, offers fast and efficient port handling for containers, breakbulk and bulk, as well as award-winning supply chain services.

Teesport experienced an industry leading 40% growth in container volumes in 2010 driven largely by to portcentric logistics business, compared to 2009, which itself saw similar levels of growth. In response to this demand, PD Ports is investing £15 million in the first phase of the project to expand Teesport's container terminal capacity to 450,000 TEU, from its current capacity of 235,000 TEU.

PD Ports will also be promoting Hartlepool as a centre of excellence for the growing renewable energy market. This is part of its continuing commitment to ensure it takes advantage of all potential opportunities to expand its own business and to provide jobs and economic benefit to the North-East.

www.pdports.co.uk

PD Ports stand 510
PD Ports Portcentic Seminar - Thursday 7th April 11:30 - 12.15
PD Ports key management will be available during Multimodal for interviews please contact amanda@imageline.co.uk to arrange a suitable time.

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:
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.

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
Please visit www.pdports.co.uk

PD Ports contact: Rebecca English,
Interim PR & Communications Manager (Maternity Cover)
01642 877026 or 07423 433 603
news@pdports.co.uk

Initial press enquiries to:
Image Line Communications
Contact: Yvonne Mulder or Amanda Shoffman
yvonne@imageline.co.uk/amanda@imageline.co.uk
020 7689 9009
www.imageline.co.uk

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