The Benefits of Port Centre Logistics

Port-centric logistics is fast becoming a supply chain strategy that many businesses cannot live without.

Whether you’re a clothing brand, a timber manufacturer or food and drink distribution business, engaging a port-centric approach in your supply chain can deliver untold benefits.

Port-centric Logistics

In its simplest term port-centric logistics uses on-port facilities  across the UK to handle all elements of inbound and outbound logistics, from storage to distribution and even full-scale manufacturing and production centres. It has gained even more prevalence over the last 18 months, with the country in the grip of a pandemic, as well as facing unprecedented change as a result of the Brexit agreement. Now more than ever, business realise they need a supply chain which is resilient, flexible and cost effective and avoids delays due to congestion.

Port-centric logistics takes a holistic approach to supply chain strategies and at Peel Ports, we are able to utilise our network of strategically located ports across the UK to deliver end-to-end solutions, which help get goods to market quickly and efficiently, helping minimise any unwanted delays.

Using ports close to the origin or destination of the cargo delivers significant benefit. Not only does it mean fewer road or rail miles are consumed on the land-leg of the journey, but it also removes carbon from the supply chain.

Even if additional fuel is burnt on a longer maritime journey, emissions from shipping can be up to 80% lower than those from road on a tonne per kilometre basis.

Close proximity can offer other indirect benefits too. The port can be used not only as a strategic gateway, but a location of supply chain activity – hence port-centric logistics.

Be it full processing, product finalisation or simple storage solutions, being close by means a port can fulfill a wide range of logistics activities, fully in the knowledge that the close proximity to the market or production plant minimises the risk of disruption as a result of congestion, maximising your responsiveness to market demands.

When you think about that package you receive after an online order at your favourite high-street brand – did it come from one of their regional warehouses? Maybe. But it equally could have come from a quayside warehouse, making the journey from ship to warehouse and into the dispatch system as efficient as possible, with fewer legs in the journey. Cheaper. Greener, Quicker.

Agribulks Industry

In the agribulks industry, which includes the movement and processing of grains and cereals, port-centric logistics works particularly well, with the majority of processing taking place at ports – as close as possible to where the product enters the country. In fact, it has done for decades.

We have  long-standing partnerships with multiple customers who take full advantage of our portside facilities for storage and processing.

Their agribulk commodities are  imported from around the world, stored processed or refined  and then the resulting manufactured products are then distributed to markets in across the UK

In the food chain its not just agribulks which can benefit, if you’re importing bananas through a southern port, why truck them into the Midlands for ripening, only to have to deliver them back to the South, when you can do it all without leaving the port in the first place?

If that wasn’t case enough for the benefit that port-centric logistics can have. Let’s take a look at the timber industry. Instead of transporting your timber from its port of entry to a processing facility hundred of miles away, why not develop a bespoke treatment and processing facility on the port estate?

This means that the first time your product hits the road, will be on its all-important journey direct to the merchant or even an end customer, reducing road miles, cutting emissions and streamlining your supply chain.

As a port operator which has long worked with its customers to really get to the heart of their needs and develop bespoke holistic solutions which provide flexible, resilient and sustainable solutions, we’ve long been an advocate of port centric logistics.