Ship canal takes project cargo

THE first project cargo has been transported on Peel Ports’ barge service on the Manchester Ship Canal.

Until now, the Liverpool-to-Manchester service has largely carried containers down the canal, but the transport of a giant chemicals tank to the Ineos facility at Runcorn has seen the start of non-containerised traffic.

The 30m-high, 20-tonne tank arrived at the Port of Liverpool from Holland on the ACL vessel Atlantic Concert, and made the onward journey on the Ship Canal to Runcorn by barge. It took just over three hours.

Stephen Carr, Peel Ports Mersey’s head of business development, said: “This is the latest development in our objective to increase usage of the Ship Canal as a logistics hub that drives down cost and CO2 emissions.

“The Port of Liverpool has seen a significant increase in container volumes over the last few months, much of which has continued the journey via our barge service to end-users – driven by supply chains looking for a lower-cost solution to serve northern and central Britain.  

“Delivery of this project cargo from the Port of Liverpool to Runcorn is a departure in that is the first non-container cargo to use our barge service, and we are keen to expand and further develop that side of the business.”

Andrew Wormald, senior sales & operations manager at Abnormal Load Services, Peel Ports’ customer on this project, said: “The sheer size of this cargo made the use of road transport problematic, and the use of Peel’s barge service was the perfect solution.”