Reflecting a new direction for the company is the reason for a name change by logistics freight business Bowmans Intermodal, which henceforth is to be known as Bowmans Rail.
According to the company, the business will not only change its name but introduce new livery and a website while also expanding its rail services into New South Wales from its home base (the small town of Bowmans), north of Adelaide.
Chief executive Scott McKay said the new name, Bowmans Rail, accurately reflected the direction of the company.
“We started off as a purely intermodal company…. While that is still a core part of our business, our primary focus is as a rail operator, providing regional rail freight services for containerised commodities such as agriculture and mining products,” Mr McKay said.
“We have a dynamic, high-growth business plan based on site expansion, providing more services to customers and expanding interstate. This builds on our growth over the past three years and we’re now a major employer in the region with more than 30 people working for us.”
He spoke of the relevance of Asia to the South Australian logistics sector.
“We are ideally located to service the proposed expansion of the Northern Adelaide Food Bowl and the cyclical resurgence of the mining industry.
“The Asian export market will become increasingly important to our customers and our business development plan also includes close monitoring and evaluation of other world markets including India”.
Chairman Shaun Mooney said until recently Bowmans Rail was a niche rail operator but they are now looking for customer-led expansion opportunities.
Bowmans Rail was established in 2003 by hay and grain export businesses at Bowmans, including current director, Malcolm May.
Over time the business has grown and the intermodal site now has a 40,000m2 hard stand area, can manage trains up to 1200 metres in length and road trains up to 36.5 metres.
The intermodal terminal handles 30,000 full TEUs of containerised products through Bowmans primarily comprising processed mining products, hay, grain and specialty pulses and separately, the business also transfers 20,000 containers of processed minerals annually.
Bowmans Rail runs more than 500 train service annually, and transports over 36,000 containers, which equates to over 1.1m tonnes of containerised freight per year.
“Agriculture and mining are major components of our current business but we will continue to expand by adding value along the supply chain with our rail equipment and container supplier partners, providing great value based on our integrated approach to full servicing,” Mr McKay said.
“These developmental projects include containers which can be filled in paddock or at mine sites and transferred directly to the processors or market.”
Bowmans operates short-haul rail services between the town of Bowmans, the mining town of Broken Hill and the Port Pirie processing hub, connecting with Port Adelaide, with connections to Melbourne.
This article originally appeared on Rail Express affiliate site Lloyd’s List Australia.