Summary
• Covered storage and distribution services are a key part of UK ports’ offering to the timber trade.
• Bespoke handling solutions provide the ability to handle all types of vessel.
• The Port of Hull’s Finland Terminal offers a bespoke pack selection service.

Ports play an essential part in the first steps of timber entering the UK.

From the Baltics to South America, they provide a central route for sawn timber, sheet materials and finished goods to flow from global markets to British shores. As such, they are integral to the supply chain for many products, offering handling, storage and distribution services.

Ports in Tilbury, Shoreham, Sheerness, Blyth, Dundee, Rosyth and Grangemouth all offer specialist services for the timber trade, including covered storage, bulk material handling, devanning from a range of cargo vessels and port-side manufacturing facilities.

Covered storage and distribution space is one of the most important elements of a port’s offering to timber importers, with ensuring the safety and quality of products paramount.

Sheerness offers 65,000m² of warehousing for weather-sensitive forest products, while the Port of Tilbury has a massive 25 acres of covered storage, transit sheds and distribution space.

All-weather loading

The Port of Blyth, which handles around 200,000 tonnes of forest products a year, offers all-weather loading under canopy or from its central warehouse arcades as it looks to minimise vehicle waiting times and optimise throughput.

Shoreham Port’s £4m investment in covered storage space for the 440,000m³ of timber it handles a year includes two six-acre paved terminal areas and an extra 6,000m² of warehouse space serving timber imports.

“The new facilities, which extend our warehousing capacity by one-sixth from 36,000m² to 42,000m², provide open and covered storage space to meet the ongoing and future demands of our expanding client base,” said Shoreham Port chief executive Rod Johnstone.

Racking has also permitted British ports to boost shed volume to give them more space on the docks. The Finland Terminal at Associated British Ports’ (ABP) Port of Hull, for instance, has introduced cantilever racking to transform a 5,000m² shed into 6,000m³ across six tiers.

This has been coupled with the application of Combilift multi-directional fork lifts to provide a comprehensive storage and handling solution for its complete array of products.

“Picker packer” system

An added benefit of this service has been the provision of a “picker packer” system that allows Northern Cargo Services, which handles UPM-Kymmene products at the port, to offer a bespoke pack selection service. Packs can be picked by number rather than specified by volume, allowing the handling of timber at the port to be taken to a micro level.

“We’ve had positive feedback from users, who say that no-one else handles timber the way we do and it makes it easier for them to get the products out to customers,” said Danny Carmichael, Finland Terminal manager.

Shoreham Port’s track-a-pack system offers a similar service to the timber trade, using bar codes and radio frequency technology to allow customers to maintain a keen eye on their stock levels. This system can even be used over the internet for remote checking and, according to Shoreham Port, helps streamline the movement of lorries.

Bespoke solutions

The variety of shipping options also means that devanning, or unloading freight requires more bespoke solutions, with bulk timber materials as demanding in this area as any other. Fluctuating tides and varying sized box hold vessels mean specialised equipment has been introduced to ensure the safe unloading of goods.

Both timber shipping line Scotline Ltd and merchant Glenalmond Timber have invested in long-reach Liebherr materials handlers to enable them to tackle the challenges. These, at Inverness and Perth harbours respectively, have enabled the safe handling of large quantities of logs, timber and wood fibre.

Danny Carmichael said the ability to handle timber was important for ports as it “opens doors” to an active market and, although timber was a small part of the Port of Hull’s operations, it was an important one.