P&amp&semicolan#38&semicolanO Ports targets port and interstate rail services with first off-dock rail terminal

<p>P&#38O Ports has taken a 30-year lease on the Somerton Intermodal Terminal in northwestern Melbourne from its owners Austrak and GPT. </p> <p>The 20 ha P&#38O Ports terminal &#8211 the first off-dock rail facility to be opened by the stevedore in Australia &#8211 is within the 120 ha Austrak Business Park on the main rail line to Sydney, the direct rail link to the West Swanson port terminal, and on the Hume Highway.</p> <p>The terminal will have a final capacity after phased development of between 400,000 and 500,000 teu, and is the start of a push by P&#38O Ports into both port shuttle and domestic interstate rail services beyond its Melbourne&#47Adelaide link. </p> <p>P&#38O Ports’s managing director for Australasia, Tim Blood, and Victorian minister of transport Peter Bachelor made a joint announcement this morning (Wednesday, May 18). </p> <p>The facility is one of a series of off-dock facilities P&#38O Ports plans around the country, with talks continuing with Austrak about a number of locations. </p> <p>Mr Blood said the first priority will be setting up a port shuttle operation. However, the ultimate goal will be enter the domestic freight rail market, which is expected to grow significantly. </p> <p>Negotiations with a number of rail haul operators are underway, he said. </p> <p>The new facility will operate from July this year, in time to meet the peak import season. </p> <p>The port shuttle will link P&#38O Ports West Swanson Dock rail terminal with the industrial areas around Somerton and Broadmeadows. </p> <p>The facility will have space for a container park so that empty containers do not have to be delivered to depots closer to the port.</p> <p>Mr Blood said that it is a logical step for P&#38O Ports to move into intermodalism, and to create an effective logistics alternative. </p> <p>However, Mr Blood said that the stevedore would be proceeding cautiously. He noted the thin margins in the intermodal transport business recently cited by FCL chief Bill Giddens &#8211 now negotiating the sale of his company to Patrick &#8211 and will be waiting to see how the container rail sector shakes out. </p> <p>P&#38O Ports’s Melbourne partner, Austrak, has planning permission for an intermodal rail facility on a block of land at Campbelltown in Sydney’s southwest. The group is known to have been in talks with nearby Macarthur Intermodal Shipping Terminal over a joint rail siding to service both terminal areas. </p> <p>But any future track extension from MIST remains caught in difficult negotiations between MIST and track owners Patrick and Toll over access and pricing arrangements. </p> <br />