<p>P&O 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&O Ports terminal – the first off-dock rail facility to be opened by the stevedore in Australia – 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&O Ports into both port shuttle and domestic interstate rail services beyond its Melbourne/Adelaide link. </p> <p>P&O 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&O 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&O 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&O 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 – now negotiating the sale of his company to Patrick – and will be waiting to see how the container rail sector shakes out. </p> <p>P&O 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 />
