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Handling 200,000+ TEU annually, round-the-clock, serving a market of 170 million people across Europe ...
Associated British Ports (ABP) is the UK's largest port operator by tonnage, running 21 portsfrom Ayr to Cardiff, Southampton to Hull and Lowestoft to Immingham. It handles over 125 million tonnes of cargo annually. In addition to its UK and US AMPORTS portfolio, ABP offers specialist services from dredging to logistics services right through to marine, estuarine and riverine conservation and management through its Marine Environmental Research division.
Immingham is also one of Britain's fastest growing ports. The combination of a strategic location on the south bank of the Humber - the UK's busiest commercial estuary - with extensive deep-water facilities makes Immingham a market leader in the UK and first choice for a wide range of customers. It offers a central location close to the UK's industrial heartland; easy access within 24 hours transit to a European market of 170 million people; congestion-free, high-speed road links; extensive rail connection facilities; consolidation opportunities for short-sea or deep-sea customers; minimum deviation from major shipping channels at the mouth of the Humber estuary; 24-hour access; plus expertise in handling a wide range of cargo types from containers, forest products, steel, general and project cargo, unit loads, agribulks, ores, coal, minerals, ro-ro, liquid bulks and solid fuels.
Based at ABP's Port of Immingham, Exxtor Terminal was acquired by ABP in 1998 and handles all container-based cargo entering and exiting the port. It handles around 200,000 units annually, combining lo-lo containers and ro-ro trailers. Such an extensive operation requires an advanced container terminal management system (CTMS): this robust technology infrastructure is provided by Autostore, a leading European port management system designed and implemented by leading intermodal and supply chain solution specialists Central Systems & Automation.
Managing major site operations ...
ABP's global shipping line customers at Immingham include APL, Evergreen, Maersk, CMA-CGM, Ferryways and MOL as well as managing cargo transshipment for major UK businesses like B&Q. Processing import/export container traffic to a range of ports including Rekjavik, Rotterdam, Ostend and Zeebrugge, Exxtor Terminal is a feeder operation. 70 per cent of its business is containerised and the remainder is committed to ro-ro. The majority of its cargoes are either manufactured goods or forestry products and the container traffic to and from the facility is transported in an inter-modal combination of road and rail.
Exxtor Terminal employs around 120 people and a range of mechanical handling equipment that includes eight reach stacker trucks plus two new RTG's to be commissioned shortly, 20 internal movement vehicles (IMVs) and two Liebherr ship-to-shore quay cranes. Once a container is discharged from the vessel deck, Autostore advises a Tallyman via RF terminal whereabouts in the stack it needs to go. They are then moved by an IMV to the stack where - directed by Autostore - the reach trucks take over for subsequent location of containers into the stack.
With 200,000 TEU being handled annually in a round-the-clock operation, accurate, reliable and real-time control over all container movements had become a pre-requisite for competitive operation. While able to handle basic moves, Exxtor Terminal's legacy container management system was no longer able to handle the container volumes, had no electronic data interchange (EDI) connectivity for sharing information with customers or other ports and was not giving a real-time picture of the various cargoes being processed.
Tough criteria ...
Migration to a scalable replacement container management system (CTMS) was needed: with the terminal already a high volume facility, a replacement was needed that could take up the strain with no disruption to daily operation. Exxtor Terminal's management team also had to balance price against system functionality and this required the reliability of an off-the-shelf solution with a proven installed base of UK or EU port users as opposed to a high-risk bespoke option.
ABP spokesman:
Over to ABP's spokesman: "With a major IT project on our hands, we needed systems planning and integration expertise from a supplier within easy geographical reach of the Humber Estuary. Autostore wasa perfect fit for our needs: already in operation at other EU ports, it offers us the sort of flexibility, power and scalability needed to handle aggressive growth."
ABP's Exxtor Terminal Autostore implementation covers all container movements in and out of the facility, from quayside to gatehouse. With a Maritime Cargo Processing (MCP) interface, Autostore provides full visibility of both cargo and storage information, letting the team set the rules for each import or export procedure in advance. This cuts the time it takes to discharge or load a ship and increases cargo throughput while providing a full audit trail of movements.
Security ...
Security is a key concern for the Exxtor team. Autostore enables them to control container cargo from shipping customer to haulier and vice versa using an automated and unique PIN access system for cargo receipt and release. The shipping customer issues the receiving haulier with a PIN for every container in advance. Because Autostore also controls entrance and exit processes at the gatehouse, no container can enter or leave the terminal without the correct PIN being used throughout each stage of cargo processing. As a failsafe procedure, each container is photographed as it enters or leaves the facility.
Exxtor Terminal runs Autostore across a WAN cluster of PCs with full RF connectivity across a Teklogix narrowband network. The application itself is deployed using terminal services: this means that the critical operating data never 'leaves' the main server room, instead being fed to users on-demand. It's an efficient 'thin-client' approach to distributed computing that protects the data and ensures that Autostore runs quickly at all local points and isn't bandwidth hungry.
Speed ...
What are the operational impacts of switching to Autostore? Container management processes now run faster and are centrally-controlled from a single point, minimising conflicts or incorrect data that might result from human input errors. Plus, LEGATO fault tolerance means Autostore can operate over a primary and a secondary server, giving full continuity in the event of a fault.
ABP spokesman:
"The solution has gone down well with users - from the experienced to the novice. The MCP interface has cut the manual reporting to deliver the right management information in real-time and the on-line guidance facility is the best we've seen. We're more efficient with faster container throughput and improved stack management. Our secondary handling has decreased, as has the on-site dwell-time that hauliers spend with us when delivering or transhipping a container. We've got real-time, highly accurate data inside the office and down on the quayside.
"The flexibility in reporting means the operational team get what they want quickly and the management team can slice and dice the terminal's performance, efficiency and margins at the click of a mouse. Now we can easily connect into the MCP port community system, allowing us to share transit information easier and more quickly. And perhaps most important of all is the safety issue. Autostore removes the need for so many people on the ground and operates a real-time container location system - which means we always know where every one of our containers are at any one time," he finished.
Exploiting new opportunities ...
Autostore is also supporting Exxtor Terminal's move into agent-based services. With several customers based in SE Asia, Autostore's extensive suite of planning functions enables the company to add value by managing stevedoring services for them locally - from control and responsibility for their containers between loads through to their maintenance. This is a particularly useful additional service bearing in mind the current worldwide oversupply of unfilled and commercially idle containers.
In summary Autostore is helping maximise Exxtor Terminal's available capacity, raising container throughput, improving accuracy, cutting paperwork and delivering real-time management information in a variety of report formats: all combining to improve the facility's scheduling, planning and storage decisions.