U.K. government approves PD Ports’ Northern Gateway terminal

U.K. government approves PD Ports’ Northern Gateway terminal British Shipping Minister Jim Fitzpatrick has approved PD Ports Ltd.’s application to build a new container terminal in the North East of England that will expand Teesport’s annual box capacity from about 250,000 TEUs to roughly 1.5 million TEUs.
   PD Ports, which is a part of the Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group, made the application for its $300 million Northern Gateway Container Terminal project in April 2006. All objections to the project have been withdrawn and as such there is no need for a public inquiry.
   The new terminal is expected to create about 5,500 jobs with first phase construction scheduled to start in 2009 and the first container handled a couple of years later. When completed the terminal will have one kilometer of riverside quay and three berths with depth alongside of 16 meters able to accommodate containerships of about 9,000 TEUs.