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More
than a middle man A total commitment to time-sensitive tree-to-table transportation techniques - that's the role of the port in the reefer chain according to the marketing manager of Britain's top conventional fresh produce handling port, Sheerness. Paul Glock sees the port's role as more important than just that of a neutral middleman. He believes the port should act as participative partner to all elements of the chain and play a critical part in the entire process. 'Imagine the reefer chain like the scales of justice, delicately balanced and vulnerable to small changes that cause drastic effects,' he says. 'The port, as part of that chain, must play its role in keeping the scales in balance, helping to ensure that the transportation system functions effectively and to a high standard. This facilitates a positive flow to each end of the reefer chain which allows consumers access to products they want and at the same time gives growers a reason to continue growing.' Medway Ports operates the port of Sheerness, which handled 564,000 tonnes of conventional fresh produce in 1999, a record volume of throughput. This is compared with 4245,000 tonnes in 1998, another record-breaking year. At Sheerness, Medway Ports offers 84,780 square metres of ambient, cool and multi-temperature (-25°C to +15°C) storage, all located within the Medway Freeport. Based at the dockside and at the Spade Lane hinterland development, Sheerness Produce Terminal offers the complete spectrum of warehousing and handling facilities, including pre-packing, repacking, labelling and quality checking, as well as controlled-atmosphere storage and full consolidation capabilities. The package of services provided by Medway Ports for shippers includes establishing time-critical vessel planning, specialist stevedoring services and ensuring temperature management during loading and unloading and ship-to-warehouse transit. As far as receiving, wholesaling and retailing are concerned, it also caters for a plethora of specialist handling requirements. 'The trick is keeping the whole chain in harmony,' stresses Glock. 'It's like rowing in a coxless eight - if you all pull together you can achieve great results, but if you get out of kilter, you end up going in circles. Co-ordinating and harnessing everyone's different motivations in order to achieve the same goal is the key and ports have an important role to play in that. A port is a multimodal interchange which allows produce to move from one mode to another in an efficient manner. Produce moves through our facilities at Sheerness with the right level of centralisation and the correct form of capital investments, to get the right activities happening at the right place. We take pride in the services we offer but don't believe we have the ultimate solution. Medway Ports works with the trade and transportation partners to continue evolving yet more efficient, effective and high-quality solutions.' The level of commitment Medway Ports gives to customers is backed up by hard capital investment from its parent company, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company (MDHC), which has invested £75 million in fresh-produce facilities at Sheerness over the last six years. In January 1999 Medway Ports opened a new fresh-produce terminal at Sheerness with a throughput capability of 25,000 pallets and an adjacent 300-metre-long deep-water berth capable of simultaneously discharging several large conventional reefer vessels. The £15 million second phase of the Spade Lane development is now also open, providing an additional 27,280 sq. m of cool and variable-temperature storage at one of Britain's most sophisticated, fully integrated fresh-produce-handling complexes. According to Glock, 'When it comes to assessing investment, Medway Ports poses itself the question: does this development add quality or cost? If it only adds cost, the plans go no further. If it adds quality, then we sit down and take a hard look at it. If we believe traffic and the trade will follow our lead in introducing new facilities, we invest confidently.' Until 1990 it was usual for fresh produce to move swiftly through UK ports to inland stores. In 1975 Medway Ports noted that trend and mooted offering cool stores at the port, altering the way fresh produce was handled. An assessment concluded that costs and risks at that time were too high but in 1990 it was felt that times had changed and the trade's attitudes were more open and flexible than before. So the first cool store was constructed at Sheerness. Trade response was enthusiastic and Medway Ports, through the MDHC, committed itself to a hefty investment programme, resulting in a variable-temperature store coming on line in 1994 followed by major terminal additions and extensions every year to date. Fresh-produce pallet space alone has jumped from 26,000 square metres in 1998 to 51,000 sq.m in 1999. 'Like the river, all products find their natural flow and we aim to place our services and facilities in locations complementary to that flow. We are not fixed to only providing dockside facilities,' comments Mr Glock. 'For instance, our Spade Lane terminal is located close to the M2 motorway because that is the natural transport route for inland hub distribution and storage centres, so time, effort and money is saved by placing our facility away from the Port. Here in the county that is the 'garden of England' there is a tremendous legacy of skills in growing and handling fresh produce. Medway Ports strives to harness that expertise at all levels of its operation and, to our staff's credit, many of our trade partners state their recognition of dealing with fellow fresh-produce management experts. It is a positive benefit we offer.' Over the last few years much has challenged the traditional way of moving fresh produce. The normal process used to be pick-pack-ship-store, but today the shipping part of the process is moving, so that pick-ship-pack-store and pick-ship-store-pack are becoming more common. 'At Sheerness the greatest growth in demand has been in the use of chilled stores,' says Glock. 'The multiples demand exacting, auditable quality standards, even to the lengths of guaranteed temperature regimes throughout transportation and storage.' There has also been a change in the way the trade views the future. 'Today the fresh-produce industry is not afraid to talk long-term and is committed to investment programmes, particularly in such areas as information technology and stock-control management,' states Glock. 'Medway Ports works alongside its partners, providing complementary and service-enhancing support, tailoring things like IT to individual customers and even entering into joint risk contracts with other organisations if they benefit several parties.' In 1998 Medway Ports entered into a 20-year contract with Fresh Fruit Services, a company owned by Capespan International, Fyffes, Superior International and Macleod McCombe, to construct and manage the new fresh-produce terminal through a joint-venture company, Fresh Fruit Terminal (Sheerness) Limited. It is this type of corporate association that Glock sees as the future. 'In the new millennium, consumers will shop from an ever more diverse global fruit basket,' he says. 'Medway Ports will continue supporting existing customers as they extend and develop their product ranges and encourage new importers to the UK. At present the outlook is bright. We saw a big tonnage increase in 1999 as compared to 1998 and there is a growing trend to use UK ports as multimodal interchange distribution centres for Europe. Certainly Medway Ports is positioning itself to take advantage of that, capitalising on the natural economy of rates out of the UK trucking back into Europe and cutting out one level of cost.' Moreover, Mersey Docks, the parent company, will continue its on-going investment programme, underscoring the group's willingness to work with partners to secure long-term goals. 'That is the level of confidence we as a port have in the fresh-produce industry and in our role in the reefer chain,' Glock concludes. |