Engineering, Freight Rail

St. Mary’s to help rail/road balance

Pacific National container. Photo: Cameron Boggs

Ports and rail group Asciano says a new intermodal terminal at St Marys in Sydney’s west will support its plan to shift freight onto rail.

Asciano announced earlier this month it hopes to help reduce road congestion, improve customer service, and minimise double handling of containers with the new intermodal terminal.

St Marys will be designed to complement Asciano’s existing intermodal terminal operations at Chullora in Sydney.

Longer term, the terminal will link at Parkes with the with the Federal Government’s Inland Rail project.

It will be a $100 million, 43 hectare, 300,000 TEU (twenty-foot or equivalent container), intermodal terminal on existing Asciano land.

“Asciano believes in a multi intermodal terminal approach to drive more freight onto rail from Port Botany, recognising that different Sydney freight catchments need different logistics solutions,” Asciano chief executive John Mullen said.

“This ‘constellation hub’ approach is focused on developing smaller, high velocity intermodal terminals in the major established freight precincts of Sydney, leveraging existing infrastructure to service freight owners where they have significant existing operations and sunk capital.

“This new facility will provide rail shuttle capacity linked to Port Botany via the Southern Sydney Freight Line and the existing Sydney metropolitan rail network.

“In future, as this service grows, it will be critical for the New South Wales Government to work to deliver a new freight corridor linking the Southern Sydney Freight Line with Eastern Creek,” Mullen said.

Asciano will implement the strategy by selling an integrated ports and rail service, contracting with shipping lines and freight owners to stevedore to move freight out of Port Botany via its rail and intermodal terminal services.

“The ‘constellation hub’ strategy will minimise community impacts as well as capital investment by targeting existing freight precincts across Sydney,” Mullen explained.

“Shuttling freight between Port Botany and a Parkes rail terminal linked with inland rail will allow double stack rail operations around Australia and will take significant amounts of freight heading north and south off Sydney’s arterial roads and passenger rail network.”

The announcement was made as part of the official opening of Patrick’s new Port Botany container terminal, featuring Australian-developed and world leading automation technology, earlier this month.

To celebrate the opening, Mullen was joined by Murray Vitlich, director of Asciano ports subsidiary Patrick, along with federal minister for cities and the built environment Jamie Briggs, and Paul Fletcher, federal minister for territories, local government and major projects, and other state and federal MPs.

“Freight is a key issue affecting city planning and development and the establishment of efficient supply chains in our major cities is critical for Australia’s productivity and our living standards,” Briggs said.

“[Freight] is vital to ensuring that we take advantage of the Free Trade Agreements that the Government has signed.

“Logistics, the movement of freight, the movement of people, and making our cities work is very much at the heart of the new Cities portfolio.”

This article originally appeared in the print edition of Rail Express affiliate Lloyd’s List Australia.