Why London Medway is a strategic location for Paper and RDF customers
Blog from Tony Baxter, Business Unit Manager for London Medway
At Peel Ports, we are extremely proud to offer the best facilities, as well as comprehensive services, for our paper and RDF products customers. With vessels arriving at our Medway port from Eastern Europe and Canada, our operations can handle and store more than 500,000 tonnes of paper annually, which is a true testament to our expertise and capabilities in this area.
As Business Unit Manager (Paper and RDF Terminals) for the Peel Ports London Medway cluster, I have seen this service offering develop enormously in recent years. There have been times when critical challenges, requiring reactive solutions for customers who need robust supply chain solutions, have occurred but our experienced team has always handled them efficiently and promptly.
My goal is to alleviate these issues for our customers and develop long-term market-leading solutions. We are using the unique geographic and technological benefits that London Medway offers to achieve this, as well as our in-house team of operatives or ITSSAR, accredited operators, who help to ensure first-class quality in our handling procedures.
For example, a previous obstacle centred on delivery demand disruption caused by the availability of HGV drivers. However, London Medway was able to pivot to rise to this challenge, introducing ‘pre-loading’ services, enabling us to load multiple trailers with goods and park them up, ready for the haulier driver’s arrival.
This added-value service, along with our recent investment of circa £200,000, creating ten new loading doors and technology upgrades, has improved our planning and loading performances throughout our operations at London Medway. This directly benefits all of our customers but has been particularly useful for our paper and RDF offerings.
As a key strategic location, London Medway provides unrivalled connectivity to London, the South West and the Midlands. The port includes 75,000m2 of warehouse space, which supports our commitment to delivering port-centric strategies for our Paper and RDF customers, while our terminals can load goods into and from containers, ready for onward transport.
This makes the entire end-to-end process very efficient for our customers, who are already reaping the benefits of the enhanced service offering and investments. For example, hauliers arriving at London Medway for paper Products can expect an average “gate in to gate out” time of 50 minutes.
At present, 33% of loads for Norske Skog, a Norwegian paper company, are pre-loaded and this benefit is being rolled out throughout our operation to our other customers.
At a time when the UK is facing a shortfall of haulier drivers, along with the impact of the pandemic, our clients are looking to us to play a part in reducing indirect activity. This supports a faster turn-around on-site to meet the demands of the customer and ensure goods are with the receiver on time.
As with every investment we make, the needs of our port-users are at the heart of every decision. This approach to logistics means we tailor solutions to individual needs and our recent investments open up new opportunities for existing and new customers in the paper and RDF sectors.
By working with our customers, we understand their requirements and using our strategic network of ports and terminals across the UK we can create forward-thinking solutions, which improve efficiencies and adds value to their supply chain.