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Displaying items by tag: 12 Quays Terminal, Birkenhead

On the Irish Sea a major £17m port modernisation project on Merseyside will help grow the region’s import and export capabilities significantly.

Work is been carried out by Peel Ports and Stena Line at the Twelve Quays terminal in Birkenhead. The project will see the dock expand to service next-generation RoRo (Roll-on/Roll-off) ferry vessels by investing in best-in-class facilities to reduce turnaround times, increase route capacity and improve health and safety by implementing one way traffic.

The newly developed terminal is expected to be fully operational by January 2020, ready to welcome Stena Line’s new fleet of E-Flexer ships which will utilise the Belfast-Liverpool route from spring 2020 following a multimillion pound investment into the region as part of a 25 year commitment.

David Huck, Managing Director – Group Ports from Peel Ports said: “The past two years have seen heavy investment in the infrastructure at Twelve Quays to offer enhanced berthing facilities for larger, more modern vessels, helping reduce turnaround times and open up opportunities to grow the region’s import and export offering by expanding capacity by 20%.

“It’s also allowed us to extend our long-term partnership with Stena Line as it takes the next steps in its major fleet investment programme, with freight and travel customers able to take advantage of faster and easier loading and unloading.”

Stena’s new E-Flexer ships are larger than today’s standard RoPax vessels and will provide freight capacity of 3,100 lane meters and the space to carry 120 cars and 1,000 passengers and crew. They are also highly fuel efficient to help reduce emissions, feeding in to Peel Ports’ goal of providing sustainable ports for the future.

Work carried out by Peel Ports includes a new multi-level berth to accommodate double-deck, simultaneous vehicle access to and from vessels as well as bigger berthing facilities for importers and exporters to take advantage of the port’s connectivity.

Published in Ferry

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.