Kuehne + Nagel rises to challenge of congested British roads
Kuehne+Nagel is opening an intermodal terminal in central England to meet the increasing challenge of moving deepsea containers through British ports on ever more congested roads.
The Swiss global logistics provider, which in volume terms claims to be the leading seafreight forwarder both in Britain and worldwide, has signed a deal to use part of ABP Connect’s rail-connected Hams Hall facility on the outskirts of Birmingham. It expects to start operations there within two months.
K+N’s chief executive for North West Europe, Peter Ulber, said that initially the intention was to run up to three container trains a day, two from Southampton and one from Felixstowe.
The development of those operations would help K+N to double the proportion of ocean freight containers it moved around the country by rail rather than by road.
‘Three years ago we had zero movement of containers by rail,’ he said. ‘Now the figure is about 25% and we expect within two years to increase that to 50%.’
Mr Ulber said K+N believed the land sector of ocean freight operations would become an increasingly significant issue for logistics service providers.
‘Not just in Britain, but maybe more so in this country than in other parts of Europe,’ he said. ‘Landside activities are where we see the major problems, or should I say challenges, over the next few years.’
In that context K+N had over the past few years concentrated on building its own independent road and rail intermodal set-up to move ocean freight containers within the country and now did all such deliveries itself.
The planned opening of the Hams Hall operation, was ‘in line with the strategy of being able to control (container) flows ourselves all the way to the distribution centres of our customers’.
Under the deal signed with Hams Hall owner ABP Connect, K+N will base its own personnel at the facility, some of them in the railfreight terminal itself and others elsewhere on the site.
The actual physical handling of the containers, using cranes and reach stackers, would be carried out by ABP Connect staff.
‘ABP Connect will be investing in new handling equipment against a guaranteed contract with K+N,’ Mr Ulber added.
In addition to the container train connections from and to leading ports, contracted out to existing operators such as EWS and Freightliner, the Hams Hall terminal would also handle ‘at least a certain percentage’ of the company’s road-based container movements in the country.
‘Initially we will operate there six days a week, 24 hours a day,’ he said. ‘Later we will probably go to seven days a week. That is a project we are developing with the ports, the terminal owner and a lot of customers.’
Meanwhile, Mr Ulber added, one of K+N’s previous European market developments, the acquisition and subsequent integration last year of contract logistics provider ACR Logistics, formerly Hays Logistics, had proved very successful.
Last year, he said, K+N’s British contract logistics division had seen GBP80m (USD158m) of existing contracts renewed and also secured GBP140m of new contracts.
Based on turnover, K+N was now number three in the British contract logistics market behind DHL and Wincanton. Plans for further developing that business included expanding total capacity by about 10%.
