Peel Ports agrees £100m crane deal

PEEL Ports has agreed a £100m contract for a series of cranes at Liverpool2, its £300m deep water port which is under construction.

The paperwork was signed in Shanghai with Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co which is supplying eight ship-to-shore (STS) megamax quay cranes and 22 cantilever rail-mounted gantry cranes.

The port, north of the city centre at Seaforth, will be able to cater for ships carrying up to 13,000 20 ft containers, up from 5,000 at present.

City leaders expect it to reposition Liverpool as the main multimodal freight and logistics hub for the north of England and Scotland. The ambition is to rival leading international ports in New York, Dubai and Singapore.

Scheduled to open next year, Liverpool2 is expected to add an extra 500,000 containers annually to the port’s capacity. It will take total annual volumes to around two million.

Peel Ports’ chief executive Mark Whitworth said: “This signing represents a significant investment for the long term and the most important investment at Port of Liverpool in the last 20 years. It will help position Liverpool2 as one of the fastest most efficient container ports in the world, allowing over 90% of the global fleet to be handled at Liverpool, making it a real game changer for shipping lines.
 
“It’s a great pleasure to be here in Shanghai to sign this important agreement with ZPMC because it is a significant part of the transformation of Port of Liverpool. ZPMC are doing much more than supplying cranes. They are helping us to deliver a project aimed at changing the logistics flows in the UK, where the Port of Liverpool is currently the third largest container port and strategically important to trade with China.”