London Gateway to remove 9,000 lorries from UK roads
London Gateway received 90,000 tonnes of aggregate for the construction of the port’s gate complex, in a single direct delivery by the bulk cargo ship Yeoman Bridge, saving 9,000 lorry journeys on the national road network.
Colin Hitchcock, London Gateway Harbour Master, said: “Yeoman Bridge is the largest aggregate ship to come this far up the River Thames to date. The 249 metre long ship arrived with a 14 metre draft and docked safely along London Gateway’s berth two on Sunday.”
Andrew Bowen, London Gateway Engineering Director, said: “This mega delivery was going to be landed at a smaller port in the South East and then transported to us by road, but we insisted the ship make arrangements to unload its cargo here at London Gateway. We were aware that by ensuring the ship docked at London Gateway we would remove 9,000 lorry trips, which is a massive saving in terms of emissions, fuel consumption and impact on our national road infrastructure.”
“In addition to taking shipments by sea and rail, we are recycling and reusing materials and have our own concrete batching on site, to reduce the number of lorries we have coming and going from site.”
The material from the ship will be used to create London Gateway’s fully automated port gate complex, which will use state of the art technology including optical character recognition to read container and vehicle information to manage traffic through the gate process.
Charles Meaby, London Gateway Commercial Director, said: “London Gateway is all about reducing the cost of road miles. We have reduced the number of lorries on the road in the construction of London Gateway and we offer our customers the ability to reduce their lorry miles and save on CO2, fuel and time costs as London Gateway is simply closer to the UK’s major markets, not just in the South East but also the Midlands and the North West.”
Drewry, the independent shipping consultancy, has estimated London Gateway will reduce round-trip transport costs by £59 per container to the Midlands and the North-West, and £189 per container for London and the South-East.
In addition to being closer to major markets, London Gateway will have Europe’s largest logistics park, allowing shippers to cut the cost associated with taking goods to distant distribution centres. London Gateway estimates 65 million road miles will be saved from DP World’s £1.5 billion pound investment into UK transport infrastructure.