Firm seals £95m shipping port deal

Jan 25 2012

A Scottish company has taken control of a major London shipping port in a £95 million deal, making it one of the largest in the UK.

Forth Ports announced it had acquired 67% of shares in Tilbury Container Services (TCS), having already owned a third of the company.

The acquisition comes the day after Forth Ports announced the sale of the Ocean Terminal shopping centre in Leith, Edinburgh. The 420,000sq ft centre was bought by real estate investor Resolution Property for an undisclosed fee.

Forth Ports said the sale would allow it to focus on its ports business. Chief executive Charles Hammond said: "This is an important acquisition and a major step forward in our plans to grow and develop our ports business.

"We believe that stronger links between our container and distribution customers will provide benefits in the supply chain for them and further underpins our port-centric strategy.

"With 100% ownership of TCS we plan to combine our existing Short Sea container terminal with TCS to create a new container business branded 'London Container Terminal'.

"The combined terminal will handle close to half a million containers and makes us the third largest single container operation in the UK and one of the few UK ports servicing both deep sea and short sea customers.

"This acquisition further underlines Tilbury's role as a distribution and transhipment hub for London."

Forth Ports now wholly owns the Port of Tilbury on the River Thames, having previously been a one-third shareholder since 1998 along with DP World and AB Ports. Last year the centre handled around 314,000 containers and regularly trades on deep sea routes to South America and South Africa.

Forth Ports operates seven other ports, with six on the Firth of Forth and one on the Tay in Dundee.