Trans Pennine rail freight link Teesport to Trafford Park
The service is a trial collaboration between PD Ports and Direct Rail Services (DRS).
According to the operators, it could remove up to 40 heavy goods vehicle (HGV) movements from the congested Trans Pennine road network for each one-way service, reducing delays and helping customers from the North East and North West cut carbon emissions.
This five-day-a-week return service is the first to directly link Teesport and the wider North East with the Manchester Trafford Park rail freight terminal, transporting modern high cube containers and offering increased efficiencies for the supply chain.
The service has used ‘ultra-low’ IDA wagons, enabling customers to move high cube containers over non-gauge enhanced and height-restricted routes across the Pennines for the first time.
Jo Edmenson, PD Ports’ key account manager for rail freight services, said: “Trans Pennine connections for operators looking to move goods across the country have been confined to road freight for many years due to the constraints of the rail network, with height restrictions at stations, bridges, and tunnels causing a number of issues.
“We’re excited to partner with DRS to offer this new service, direct from the UK’s sixth largest port to the heart of the North West.
“The route opens up a major new connection between the two regions and offers alternative means of shipping goods into the east coast of the UK and onwards, with the same true for exports.”
Gottfried Eymer, DRS’s managing director for rail, said: “This new trial offers a new route to customers who may not have considered rail before.
“It is an open access service which will amalgamate different customers to one train, saving time and cost.
“Rail is much more environmentally friendly when compared to road, producing up to 76 per cent fewer CO2 emissions, while each train can remove up to 40 HGVs from the roads, reducing congestion.”
Teesport offers direct connections to major hub ports across Europe, with more than 20 short sea vessel calls each from key markets, including Iberia, Scandinavia, the Baltics, the Netherlands, and Poland.
The Teesport Container Terminal offers RoRo and LoLo services, complemented by onward links, including in-house road and rail solutions, warehousing, and value-added services.
The new Trans Pennine service can accommodate 45ft containers, opening up the short sea shipping market arriving and leaving Teesport on RoRo and LoLo services.
PD Ports is hailed as one of the UK’s major port groups, operating across 11 locations nationwide, including Teesport and Hartlepool in the north, a cluster of sites on and around the River Humber, and Felixstowe, Thames, and the Isle of Wight in the south.