Thames Freeport - Britain's Trading Future

[ 14 ] Over the past ten years, the port and its customers have invested over £1 billion to improve and expand facilities — delivering two sizeable extensions to the port’s footprint at London Distribution Park and Tilbury2. This 230-acre growth has helped deliver the largest warehouse in the UK for Amazon, the country’s biggest unaccompanied freight ferry terminal operated by P&O Ferries and Britain’s biggest construction processing terminal operated by Tarmac. This expansion programme is fuelled by a commercial drive to seize upon Tilbury’s vital ingredients — unrivalled proximity to market, excellent connectivity and a highly skilled workforce — supported by a local authority, Thurrock Council, and the Government who recognise the value of promoting trade-based growth in the logistics cluster around the Port of Tilbury. Following the completion of the construction of Tilbury2 in 2021, Forth Ports is preparing more land for development. These sizeable parcels of land are located to the east and north of the site and have been boosted by freeport tax site status. This means that the port’s development platform will benefit from a package of fiscal incentives that will lower the set-up costs of a new operation by up to 50 per cent. Alongside tax site business investment incentives, the port’s development areas will be enhanced by fresh digital, road and rail connections through the roll-out of 5G across the port’s sites, alongside a direct connection to the new Lower Thames Crossing — the largest road scheme in Europe — and electrified links to the national rail network. It is the port’s vision for the 400-acres of development land at Tilbury to benefit from all the successful ingredients of the rest of the site, including excellent rail, road and river connections, with a focus on cleaner, greener and leaner logistics and value added activities to boost the UK’s manufacturing and processing capacity. P O R T O F T I L B U RY The Port of Tilbury is a logistics and development hotspot. The ownership group, Forth Ports, has responded by delivering major expansions to the port in record time. Tilbury2 was a £250 million investment to repurpose a 160- acre brownfield site adjacent to the main port, with new and expanded road, rail and marine infrastructure. The project has delivered the country’s largest unaccompanied freight ferry terminal and Britain’s biggest construction materials processing terminal. Tilbury2 comprises: • A freight ferry terminal for importing and exporting containers and trailers, in partnership with P&O Ferries • A facility for importing, processing, manufacturing and distributing construction materials, in partnership with Tarmac • Strategic rail terminals to serve the longest freight trains at 775 metres • Storage areas for a variety of goods, including cars • AEO status with the latest booking and border technology — such as number plate recognition — and a new 12-bay border control post. The project has been hailed by the Government as an exemplar during its recent infrastructure review for both its speed of delivery through the planning system and asset delivery through the construction process. Designated as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, the scheme took less than 18 months to secure development consent from the Government in February 2019, with the first freight ferry service calling in May 2020 and the whole site built out and fully occupied by November 2021. The project was driven by a desire to allow one of the port’s key customers, P&O Ferries, to expand its operations through the use of bigger vessels, with quicker turnaround times — ensuring rush-hour-busting delivery schedules — and headroom in the terminal capacity to significantly grow the existing Zeebrugge route and expand further across northern Europe. Fed by the largest aggregate vessels in the world, to the north of the terminal, Tarmac’s site is a hive of value-added activity turning marine dredged and imported quarried aggregates into an array of products for commercial use and then distributed using its dedicated rail connection. This combination of assets and onsite processing capability has led to significant operational efficiencies and increased the productivity of the company’s operations as it supports the South East’s commercial, residential and public building projects such as HS2, Tideway and the Tube upgrades. Record delivery: Tilbury2