London Thamesport (formerly just "Thamesport") was a small container seaport on the River Medway, serving the North Sea. It is located on the Isle of Grain, in the Medway unitary authority district of the English county of Kent. The area was formerly called Port Victoria. Since early 2020, Thamesport has ceased to operate as a container port, having been eclipsed by the new and much larger London Gateway container port on the Essex coast of the Thames Estuary.
In 1953, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company opened a large oil refinery, Kent Refinery, on the south of the Isle of Grain. A fuel depot with an attached port had existed there since 1928. From 1953, [1] over ten million tons of crude oil were processed annually on the 4 km2 (1.5 sq mi) site. This led to the establishment of the oil-fired power station at Grain and dual-fuel capable Kingsnorth. In practice, Kingsnorth used coal. The refinery was closed on 27 August 1982, [2] and work was transferred to other BP locations. The plant was taken over by British Gas plc (at that time still state owned), which used a small part of the site as Grain LNG Terminal for the storage of liquefied natural gas. [3] Three-quarters of the site remained unused.
During the construction of the Channel Tunnel, segments to line the tunnel from the British side were made on the site that is now Thamesport, before being delivered by railway to the site at Shakespeare Cliff, near Dover. As there was hardly any room at the site itself, the site on the Isle of Grain was chosen because of the links to the ships from Scotland delivering aggregate. Trains full of segments left the factory each day, travelling on the Hundred of Hoo Railway on the island before taking a circuitous route avoiding steep gradients before arriving at Shakespeare Cliff.
In 1987 British Gas submitted plans to use 0.87 km2 (0.34 sq mi) of the disused refinery site as a container port. Building began in 1989. The risk capital financing of the £150 million project, named Thamesport, took place through the operating company Thames Estuary Terminals Ltd., later Thamesport Ltd. By March 1990 the enterprise had a capacity of approximately 360,000 TEU per year.
Land access to Thamesport was at first only by road. In time the railway line from Gravesend to the Isle of Grain was to be used. A goods station with track and transshipment facilities was developed at Thamesport. A government subsidy of £1.8 million was received. It started operating in January 1992 but the last container train ran in 2013. [4]
By the first half of 1990, the repayment of c. £100 million risk capital put the operator company Thamesport Ltd. into administration. The investment group Rutland Partners LLP acquired 95% of MTS holdings Ltd – the parent company of Thamesport Ltd – in December 1995 for £25 million and took over debts of £27 million. With the new owner, the port was further developed. The capacity increased to approximately 635,000 TEU per year. In 1997, with a turnover of £27.3 million, a profit (before tax) of approximately £2.5 million was made. In February 1998 Rutland Partners LLP sold their interest in MTS holdings Ltd and small navigation company "Maritime Haulage" for £112 million to the Hutchison Whampoa Group. Hutchison Whampoa also operates two other important ports on the British east coast, Felixstowe and Harwich.
In 2001 Thamesport was developed into a deep-water port. The harbour basin was dredged to a depth of at least 15.5 metres (8.5 fathoms), and the approach to a minimum depth of 12.5 metres (6.8 fathoms), at a cost of £3.5 million. In June 2008, its name was changed to London Thamesport. [5]
The heart of London Thamesport is a 655 metres (2,149 ft) deep water dock. The quay has eight (STS) gantry cranes, and can service vessels with draughts of 14.5 metres (48 ft). The temporary storage facility has capacity for 26,000 TEU; i.e. 13,000 standard containers. The container handling is semi-automatic, as the container tugs are manually operated. 635,000 TEU can be processed annually. In the long-term the capacity could be doubled.
Although site constraints limit the maximum possible length of the quay to only 750 metres (2,500 ft), there is considerable scope for future development at London Thamesport. The majority of this brownfield site (a former oil refinery) remains undeveloped, and Thamesport Interchange has outline planning permission to build 5,000,000 square feet (465,000 m2) of logistics related facilities. [6]
Immediately to the north of London Thamesport is a terminal for the import of aviation fuel (kerosene). London Thamesport will be well-placed if proposals for a new London Airport, either on the Isle of Grain itself, or on the Mayor of London's "Boris Island", come to fruition. (This is unlikely to be a consideration in anything other than the long-term future. In December 2013, the Airports Commission, chaired by Sir Howard Davies, excluded these proposals from its short-list of possible recommendations. The Commission later studied a number of aspects of the 'Inner Thames Estuary Proposal' and announced in July 2014 that it would not be adding any such proposal to its short-list.)[ citation needed ]
Although the company appears confident of further development and a prosperous future, [7] London Thamesport has been eclipsed by the new and much bigger London Gateway port on the north bank of the Thames. London Gateway is now operational and (as of September 2017) is receiving 17 container ships per day. [8] There are plans for a cement factory on the former container marshalling yard. [9]
Thamesport is connected to national road network by the A228.
The port also has a connection to the single-track, standard-gauge, freight Hundred of Hoo Railway. Two British rail freight companies – DB Cargo UK and Freightliner – operated container services to Thamesport. [10] In the first half of 2005, approximately 25% of traffic to and from Thamesport used the rail link. However, the last container train ran on 6 November 2013. [4]
The Port of London is that part of the River Thames in England lying between Teddington Lock and the defined boundary with the North Sea and including any associated docks. Once the largest port in the world, it was the United Kingdom's largest port as of 2020. Usage is largely governed by the Port of London Authority ("PLA"), a public trust established in 1908; while mainly responsible for coordination and enforcement of activities it also has some minor operations of its own.
Isle of Grain is a village and the easternmost point of the Hoo Peninsula within the district of Medway in Kent, south-east England. No longer an island and now forming part of the peninsula, the area is almost all marshland and is a major habitat for diverse wetland birds. The village constitutes a civil parish, which at the 2011 census had a population of 1,648, a net decrease of 83 people in 10 years.
The Port of Felixstowe, in Felixstowe, Suffolk, is the United Kingdom's largest container port, dealing with 48% of Britain's containerised trade. In 2017, it was ranked as 43rd busiest container port in the world and 8th in Europe, with a handled traffic of 3.85 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). In 2019 it was ranked the UK's 7th busiest port.
The Hoo Peninsula is a peninsula in Kent, England, separating the estuaries of the rivers Thames and Medway. It is dominated by a line of chalk, clay and sand hills, surrounded by an extensive area of marshland composed of alluvial silt. The name Hoo is a Saxon word believed to mean 'spur of land' or refers to the 'distinct heel-shape of the ridge of hills' through Hoo. Hoo features in the Domesday Book. The peninsula is home to internationally and nationally protected wildlife sites as well as industrial facilities and energy industries.
Kamarajar Port, formerly Ennore Port, is located on the Coromandel Coast, Chennai about 18 km north of Chennai Port. It is the 12th major port of India, and the first port in India which is a public company. The Kamarajar Port Limited is the only corporatised major port and is registered as a company. Chennai Port Trust acquired around 67% stake of Centre in the Kamarajar Port Limited on 27 March 2020. The remaining 23 percent was already held by the Chennai Port Trust.
The Port of Halifax comprises various port facilities in Halifax Harbour in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It covers 10 km2 (3.9 sq mi) of land, and looks after 150 km2 (58 sq mi) of water.
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The Port of Montreal is a cruise and transshipment point. It is located on the St. Lawrence River in Montreal, Québec, Canada. The port operates as an international container port. It services Toronto, the rest of Central Canada, the Midwestern United States, and the Northeastern United States. Though found on the Saint Lawrence Seaway, it is some 260 miles (420 km) inland from the Atlantic Ocean and it is on the shortest direct route between the North American Midwest and Europe or the Mediterranean.
Teesport is a large sea port located in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, Northern England.
Coryton Refinery was an oil refinery in Essex, England, on the estuary of the River Thames 28 miles (45 km) from central London, between Shell Haven Creek and Hole Haven Creek, which separates Canvey Island from the mainland.
The Hundred of Hoo Railway is a railway line in Kent, England, following the North Kent Line from Gravesend before diverging at Hoo Junction near Shorne Marshes and continuing in an easterly direction across the Hoo Peninsula, passing near the villages of Cooling, High Halstow, Cliffe and Stoke before reaching the Isle of Grain and the container port on its eastern tip, Thamesport. There used to be a short branch line leading from Stoke Junction to the coastal town of Allhallows but this closed from 4 December 1961, the same date on which the Hundred of Hoo line was closed to passenger services.
Shell Haven was a port on the north bank of the Thames Estuary at the eastern end of Thurrock, Essex, England and then an oil refinery. The refinery closed in 1999 and the site was purchased by DP World who received planning consent in May 2007 for the new London Gateway deep water container port at the site. The neighbouring Coryton Refinery remained in operation until 2012.
The Port of Yingkou is an international seaport in Yingkou, Liaoning, People's Republic of China. It is the second-largest port in northeast China and the tenth-largest nationwide. It includes two separate dockland areas, the Yingkou old port at the mouth of the Daliao River, and the Bayuquan port located directly on Liaodong Bay on the Bohai Sea.
Grain Power Station is a 1,275 megawatts (1,710,000 hp) operational CCGT power station in Kent, England, owned by Uniper. It was also the name of an oil-fired, now demolished, 1,320MW power station in operation from 1979 to 2012.
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The BPRefinery (Kent) was an oil refinery on the Isle of Grain in Kent. It was commissioned in 1953 and had a maximum processing capacity of 11 million tonnes of crude oil per year. It was decommissioned in August 1982.
The Port of Saint John is a port complex that occupies 120 hectares of land along 3,900 m (12,800 ft) of waterfront of the Saint John Harbour at the mouth of the Saint John River in the city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. The Port of Saint John, with facilities on both sides of the river, is noted for its extreme tidal range and river currents. Because of the semi-diurnal tides and the river influence, slack water occurs at approximately half tide and not at high or low water as at most other ports.
The Thames Hub is a proposal for a new approach to integrated infrastructure development that combines rail, intermodal freight logistics, aviation, tidal renewable energy and its transmission, flood protection and regional development in the Thames Estuary and connects this infrastructure to a trade and utilities spine that runs the length of the UK. It was developed by architects Foster + Partners, infrastructure consultants Halcrow and economists Volterra and launched by Lord Foster at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London on 2 November 2011.
Grain LNG Terminal is a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal on the Isle of Grain, 37 miles (60 km) east of London. It has facilities for the offloading and reloading of LNG from ships at two jetties on the River Medway; for storing and blending LNG; for truck loading; and regasifying and blending natural gas to meet UK specifications. The terminal can handle up to 15 million tonnes per annum of LNG, has a storage capacity for one million cubic metres of LNG, and is able to regasify up to 645 GWh per day for delivery into the high pressure gas National Transmission System (NTS). The facility is owned and operated by National Grid Grain LNG Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of National Grid.
Oil terminals are key facilities for the import, export, storage, blending, transfer and distribution of oil and petroleum products. Many terminals are located at coastal sites, such as Teesside and the lower Thames, to allow the offloading and loading of coastal shipping. Inland terminals, located around major cities, such as Birmingham and Manchester, facilitate the distribution of products to local industrial and commercial users. Many terminals have road tanker loading equipment for local distribution of products such as petrol, diesel, and heating oil. The terminals are connected through a network of underground pipelines to enable the transfer of oil and refined products across Britain.
