PD Ports Release - Time For Teasport

LONDON, ENGLAND, October 14, 2010 (Press-News.org) Tea and coffee merchants, Taylors of Harrogate, has awarded PD Ports a ten year contract to handle 100 per cent of its tea and coffee imports, securing around 10 jobs. This follows a successful 12 month trial, handling fifty per cent of Taylors' tea and coffee UK imports, through PD Ports-owned Teesport on the north-east coast.

The family business will now import all of its tea and coffee through Teesport, rather than southern UK ports with further transportation via road to its production facility at Harrogate - saving about 100,000 road miles per year.

"Not only does the move to Teesport help us greatly improve our environmental footprint, it also reduces costs. We're committed to buying the best tea and coffee the world has to offer for our Yorkshire Tea and other blends, and the partnership with PD Ports ensures we're able to maintain these high quality standards throughout the import and warehousing process," says Keith Writer, commodities director at Taylors of Harrogate.

PD Ports has invested more than GBP350,000 in upgrading two warehouses to store the sensitive products, including the installation of dehumidification and specialist handling equipment. From Teesport, the teas and coffees are transported by PD Ports' logistics team, on demand, the short distance to Taylors' production facility.

David Robinson, PD Ports group chief executive officer, says the new contract proves that the 'portcentric logistics' concept works for a wide range of companies and products. "With our range of services and highly experienced staff, we can offer a much more environmentally-friendly and cost effective logistics solution in many different markets."

During the trial period, PD Ports showed it could offer all the services which Taylors needed, from customs clearance and container de-stuffing to warehousing and just-in-time distribution to the production plant in Harrogate. The upgraded warehouses total 60,000 sq ft and are designed to be able to handle more products as Taylors' business grows.

PD Ports has just taken delivery of new vehicles, in the livery of one of Taylors' most well-known products, Yorkshire Tea, which will be dedicated to transporting the products from the warehouses to Harrogate.

"We have worked closely with Taylors to develop exactly the service they need and we are delighted to have secured this long-term contract. It demonstrates again that our decision to promote the portcentric logistics concept is a winning solution for further improving our customers' supply chains," concluded Mr Robinson.

Picture Caption: Warehouse launch October 2010 David Robinson (left) with Andy Brown, Taylors of Harrogate MD

For a high res version of this image please contact amanda@imageline.co.uk


About PD Ports:

· PD Ports Limited is owned by Canadian based Brookfield. Brookfield is a global asset manager focused on property, renewable power and infrastructure assets, with over $100 billion of assets under management. PD Ports was bought by Brookfield in November 2009.

· PD Ports is a high performing specialist ports business offering a wide variety of supply chain services to improve customers' international product and material movements into and out of - as well as within - the UK.

· PD Ports employs over 1140 members of staff, and generates an annual turnover of over GBP115 million from many UK locations.

· PD Ports operates throughout the UK from bases at many key ports and logistics centres. · The 3 business interests of PD Ports are:

o Port Operations- is split into two business streams - bulks and unitised and includes:

§ Teesport: one of the top 4 UK ports, with flows of containers, bulk traffics and finished cars, handling almost 40 million tonnes of throughput p.a.

§ Humber & Small Ports: owners and/or operators of ports on the Humber estuary, Rivers Trent and Ouse, and at Medina Wharf, Isle of Wight. Service offerings include ships' agency, chartering and stevedoring services.

§ Logistics: PD Logistics offers warehousing and distribution services at UK locations throughout the North East, Humberside & East Anglia, including at Felixstowe. Please visit http://www.pdlogistics.comDevelopment plans for port operations include:

· The Northern Gateway Container Terminal: a major new deep sea container terminal planned at Teesport on the South side of the River Tees. The GBP300+ million development will have a capacity of 1.5 million TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit) and is anticipated to deliver over 5,500 jobs to the Tees Valley, when fully operational. Circa 1,300 of the 5,500 new jobs have already been created through portcentric logistics operations in the past four years.

· Portcentric Logistics: a concept promoted by PD Ports for locating the storage and distribution of imported goods close to the point of arrival at a UK port. This concept avoids the slow handling and return of empty containers as well as eradicating unnecessary UK road mileage, which occurs when delivering to a traditional inland import centre, such as in the Midlands. In 2006 ASDA Wal*Mart opened a 360,000 sq ft import centre at Teesport and has saved more than 8 million road miles by adopting the portcentric concept. Adjacent to the ASDA facility, Tesco operates a purpose built 1.2 million sq ft import centre at Teesport, which opened in 2009.

o Conservancy - this includes:

§ Management of river traffic for the ports of Tees and Hartlepool, ensuring safe navigation and maintaining the required channel depth.

o Property- this includes:

§ Revenue and income from property and facilities owned by PD Ports and used by third party clients on long term leases.

§ Land that is not utilised for operational purposes and offers potential for development.

§ Port land at Hartlepool docks, which is highly attractive to the growing renewable energy sector, including offshore, windfarms, and biomass plants. PD Ports' long term strategy is to further develop Hartlepool docks as a centre of excellence for the offshore support sector.

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Please visit http://www.pdports.co.uk
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