PD Ports has recently made two new appointments to help drive business growth.
Rob Brewster has been appointed as Development Director Logistics and Andrew Lowdon has joined the Company as Commercial Analyst.
These new roles are designed to further emphasise PD Ports’ growth strategy and to continuously reinvigorate the business’s commercial activities and seek new opportunities in existing and emerging markets.
Rob’s remit is to lead the business development teams across all elements of PD Ports’ logistics activities, with an initial focus on portcentric and contract logistics. Rob, who is based at Felixstowe, will report to Business Development Director, Geoff Lippitt, and will work closely with the existing logistics management teams to significantly expand further opportunities for growth.
From Felixstowe, Rob joins PD Ports from DHL International Supply Chain where he was UK Business Development Director for three years. Rob has a wealth of experience at UK, European and global levels within the shipping industry and with leading logistics providers across a wide range of industry sectors.
Andrew Lowdon is based at PD Ports’ headquarters in Middlesbrough where he will further support the business development teams by providing research and analysis of market sectors and companies with which PD Ports seeks to develop commercial relationships.
Andrew joins PD Ports from development agency, One North East, where he was employed for seven years conducting research and analysis projects, which focussed on attracting inward investment to the North east region.
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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 1200 members of staff, and generates an annual turnover of over £115 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, recycling and distribution services at UK locations throughout the North East, Humberside & East Anglia, including at Felixstowe.
Development 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 £300+ 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 WalMart 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. Tea and coffee specialists Taylors of Harrogate opened a purpose built warehouse facility at Teesport Commerce Park on the periphery of Teesport in 2010 to handle its UK imports.
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
