China to supply cranes for Liverpool port project

LONDON - A Shanghai company has won a 100 million pounds ($176.8 million) contract to supply cranes for what is the biggest-ever expansion project at the Port of Liverpool.

The owner of the port, Manchester-based Peel Ports, has placed an order for a series of cranes for its new 300 million pounds deep-water port currently under construction on the River Mersey in Northern England.

The contract for the cranes has been signed with Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co (ZPMC) which is supplying eight ship-to-shore megamax quay cranes and 22 cantilever rail-mounted gantry cranes.

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The project will enable the Port of Liverpool to handle the world's largest container ships, currently unable to use the existing docks complex which is restricted because it has to be accessed through dock gates.

Peel said when the new facility is completed the port will be able to cater for ships carrying up to 13,000 standard-sized containers, up from 5,000 at present.

The project is backed by the city's political leaders who say the expansion is expected to reposition Liverpool as the main multimodal freight and logistics hub an area spanning more than half of Britain -- stretching from the north of England to the whole of Scotland. The aspiration for the port is to rival leading international ports in New York, Dubai and Singapore.

Scheduled to open next year, the new facility, known as "Liverpool2," is expected to add an extra 500,000 containers annually to the port's capacity. It will take total annual volumes to around 2 million containers.

Peel Ports' chief executive Mark Whitworth said: "This signing represents a significant investment for the long term and the most important investment at Port of Liverpool in the last 20 years. It will help position Liverpool2 as one of the fastest most efficient container ports in the world, allowing over 90 percent of the global fleet to be handled at Liverpool, making it a real game changer for shipping lines."

"ZPMC are doing much more than supplying cranes. They are helping us to deliver a project aimed at changing the logistics flows in the UK, where the Port of Liverpool is currently the third largest container port and strategically important to trade with China," he added.

Peel own hundreds of hectares of derelict dockland, abandoned when container freight took over from traditional cargo ships. The company has unveiled an ambitious 5 billion pound plan to transform the old dockland with a Shanghai-style skyline, aiming to attract investments from China.

Liverpool Waters, as the regeneration of the old docklands has been named, has full backing from the British government who see the program as a nationally-important project to create tens of thousands of jobs and boost Britain's economy.