Winter 2007
 [December 2007] John Pethullis (Portasilo), Chairman of the IMechE’s Bulk Materials Handling Committee, recently joined other members of the committee for their regular quarterly meeting at Associated British Ports’ (ABP) Port of Immingham, near Grimsby.
The gathering kicked off with a presentation by members of ABP’s team, outlining the port’s development and providing an overview of the recently inaugurated Humber International Terminal 2. Around £59.5 m has been invested in facilities and infrastructure at this new dedicated coal-handling terminal, following the £35m already invested in DFDS Nordic Terminal Riverside at Immingham Outer Harbour, which handles roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) traffic. Emphasising its ‘green’ credentials, ABP has also invested £3.5m to create two new wildlife sites on the banks of the Humber Estuary to mitigate the loss of 31 hectares of mudflats as a result of the port’s development.
Humber International Terminal 2 can handle cape-size vessels, which are typically above 150,000 deadweight tons, and the ability to service these ships will inevitably boost the port’s key coal, dry bulk and ro-ro trades. Capitalising on recent increases and projected long-term growth in coal imports, the terminal was built following the signing of agreements with power-station operators International Power, Scottish and Southern Energy, Drax Power and EDF Energy, as well as mining giant BHP Billiton, providing the capability to handle around 9.5 mt of coal per annum. This has already paid dividends.
During 2006, there was a 14% leap in Immingham’s total coal tonnage throughput to 15.7 mt, pushing monthly throughput past the 1 mt mark in August last year. Renewed agreements for other commodities struck in 2006 will also see the port continue to handle approximately 400,000 t of agribulks per annum for Arkady Feed (UK) Ltd and Cefetra.
The Committee was treated to a conducted tour of the new facility by the ABP team, providing an insight into just how complex the business is of shifting coal from ship to stockyard and reclaiming it for onward transfer by rail to power station customers inland.
When you consider that potential demurrage charges on ships can reach $100,000 a day, where there are variations in product consistency between cargoes for different power station customers, potentially difficult coal cargoes that might even be frozen solid in the hold depending on the source port, all coupled to the consequences of any equipment downtime, you get an inkling of just what faces ABP's team on a daily basis.
 All operations are under the watchful eye of a computerised control room on the dockside, ensuring that all activities are run with military precision. The centralised control room is the key to the terminal's success, controlling all activities on site and providing an overview of the whole sequence of events.
This involves grabbing coal out of the ship using one of three Gottwald mobile cranes and decanting it into dockside hoppers which feed a 2-m wide conveying system operating at speeds of up 5 m per sec. Coal is then transferred to a 100-acre stockyard area where a Voestalpine stacker/reclaimer distributes it to a complex layout of client specific stockpiles.
Environmental measures in the stockyard ensure that dust generation is minimised. When reclaimed, coal passes to a further conveying system for elevation to a transfer tower hopper for subsequent discharge into the rail wagon loading facility.
 Computerised realtime maps in the control room, fed by GPS transponders and trackside sensors, enable the position of each train on the rail network to be plotted at any given moment, allowing operators to monitor, control and sequence loading and despatch of trains. Currently, around 130 trains are dealt with on a weekly basis.
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