A 1.5 million TEU intermodal terminal will be built in Sydney’s south west after the Commonwealth came to terms with Aurizon and Qube Logistics to build a site by 2017.
Aurizon and Qube’s joint venture, the Sydney Intermodal Terminal Alliance (SIMTA), owns a plot of land alongside Commonwealth property, in Moorebank.
Authorities have for some time been investigating an intermodal container terminal at the site, with the government’s Moorebank Intermodal Company (MIC) selecting SIMTA as preferred bidder for the project in early 2014.
The deals announced on Thursday combine the SIMTA- and Commonwealth-owned land under a land trust, and lease that land to SIMTA under a 99-year lease.
Moorebank is seen as one solution to Sydney’s freight traffic growth over the medium to long term. With waterfront real-estate at Port Botany running out, Port Botany will add to the list of existing off-site distribution hubs designed to take some pressure off the road infrastructure at the port itself.
The project also achieves the state’s long-term goal of putting more freight on rail: with the link between Port Botany and Moorebank being by rail, there will theoretically be less trucks visiting the port directly in the future.
Moorebank will have import-export capacity up to 1.05 million TEU* a year and a separate inter-state terminal with capacity for up to 500,000 TEU a year. Around 850,000 square metres of integrated warehousing will be built.
SIMTA will provide up to $1.5 billion in private investment for the project while the MIC will provide $370 million, instead of the original $900 million.
“Combining the site into a single development optimises the outcomes and minimises taxpayer exposure,” federal infrastructure and regional development minister Warren Truss said in a joint statement with finance minister Mathias Cormann.
“This new, major interstate terminal will get more freight off our highways and onto rail, driving significant improvements in national productivity.
“There will be open access for rail operators and other users of the Moorebank facility to promote competition.”
The government expects total economic benefits of the project at close to $9 billion, by relieving traffic congestion on Sydney’s roads, reducing costs to business, and achieving better environmental outcomes.
The Moorebank site has rail access to Port Botany via the Southern Sydney Freight Line, which runs from McArthur to Birrong, and the state rail network.
Moorebank sits on the M5 motorway and is approximately 4.5km to the east of the M7 motorway. These two motorways, with other highways to the east, effectively create a semi-rectangular motorway system around Sydney that is also intersected by major “A” roads around its circumference.
Canberra estimates that 1,300 jobs will be created during the construction phase with up to 7,700 jobs created when the precinct goes live.
Subject to planning and environmental approvals by Commonwealth and state authorities, work on the project will begin this year. The import-export terminal is expected to start operations in late 2017 while the interstate terminal is planned to operate from 2019.
With Oliver Probert.
*The twenty-foot equivalent unit (often TEU or teu) is an inexact unit of container volume. Shipping containers typically come in twenty-foot (1 TEU) or forty-foot (2 TEU) lengths.