Maritime Transport has grown from a road-based logistics operation to be one of the biggest intermodal rail operators in the UK in just twenty years. Already moving around 5,500 containers every week, the company has ambitious plans to grow much further. It’s a tall order and director John Bailey says it faces significant challenges.
With potential for more than thirty new intermodal trains every week, Maritime’s familiar blue and white livery could soon be as prominent on the rails as it is on the roads of the UK. However achieving that growth presents more questions than answers. That hasn’t stopped the Compnay pressing ahead with plans to connect London with the North and Scotland, and several cross-country flows.
National assets as a showcase
Putting on trains is one thing. Putting in the infrastructure to handle them is an altogether more capital intensive matter. “Intermodal terminals are not cheap to build and not cheap to maintain”, John Bailey told an industry audience recently in Salford, Greater Manchester, organised by the Rail Freight Group, before hosting a visit to the company’s facility at Trafford Park. “The moral of the story is to present to the rail freight industry more often.”
Bailey says that infrastructure is both a challenge and an asset for the logistics industry. Noting the ongoing issue of road driver recruitment, he said his company used its national assets as a showcase. “Operating from an intermodal terminal showcases the best of the driving profession”, he said, by demonstrating the best of the industry in one location. Although he did say that was no easy and challenges like getting enough electricity into a terminal was a substantial cost, quoting an electrical substation as in excess of five million pounds (5.82 million euro).