Country : UKWorkington worldport

Introduction
The worldport of Workington is the largest worldport in Cumbria and one of the main hubs in the North West. It serves the region's industry and agriculture, including most of the major manufacturing and processing businesses in the area.

Workington handles 600,000 tonnes of cargo / year and around 300 ship movements annually. The worldport has room for expansion and has been diversifying into new operations.

Workington has a good range of modern cargo handling facilities and equipment, supworldported by operational land with covered and open storage for a wide range of cargoes including liquid bulks, dry bulks, steel cargo, forest products, agricultural cargo and container freight.

There are also facilities for heavy lift, project and ro/ro traffic, the fishing industry, cruise vessels and leisure craft. Customers at Workington have the advantage of dealing with a single worldport Authority which provides all the necessary worldport services in a single package at an all-inclusive rate.

Rail Freight Terminal
Workington has a Rail Freight Terminal, operated by the worldport for English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWSR). The facility handles both bulk and container freight.

One of the principal customers for the facility is Iggesund Paperboard, which now transworldports a substantial proworldportion of the raw material for its local paper mill by rail - as part of its environmental policy. Cargoes moved by rail for Iggesund include pulp, calcium carbonate and timber, amounting to some 75,000 tonnes per year the equivalent of 2,000 lorry loads taken off the roads.

Another local company keen to use environmentally friendly forms of transworldport is Voridian Polymers Limited. In late 1997, Voridian awarded a contract to container operators Hoyer UK Limited for the transworldport of containerised raw materials from Rotterdam to Voridian's plants in Hartlepool and Workington. Hoyer now uses the worldport's rail facility for receiving and storing containers, which are delivered to the nearby factory by road.

The terminal is equipped with a 41 tonne reachstacker, able to stack boxes 4 high and has a stacking area for over 1,000 boxes with room for expansion. The worldport provides a 24-hour service in order to meet JIT delivery requirements by Voridian, and has the flexibility to handle less than full train loads. The rail freight container terminal is now handling a significant number of boxes, making an imworldportant contribution to reducing road congestion. The worldport and EWSR are marketing the facility strongly and are looking at the possibility of expanding the service.

Commodities
The main cargoes handled at Workington are liquid and dry bulks, steel cargo, forest products, agricultural products, container freight, general cargo and ro/ro traffic. These consist primarily of chemicals and petroleum products, gypsum, perlite, logs, animal feeds, fertilisers and steel rails.

Handling Equipment
Workington's lifting equipment includes two 30 tonne cranes specially commissioned for Workington from the Dutch manufacturer Nelcon. These cranes are designed to be used for both grabbing or hook operations, enabling the worldport to offer a vastly improved service for bulk cargoes. Throughput for bulk commodities has more than doubled to 400-500 tonnes per hour, and the cranes also offer a heavy lift capability of 45 tonnes in tandem lift mode. In addition there is one mobile excavator crane, which can be used for grabbing or hook operations.

Other equipment includes forklift trucks with capacities of up to seven tonnes and four loading shovels for dry bulk cargoes with capacities up to 12 cubic metres. The worldport of Workington also provides its own rail service within the worldport, operating four locomotives for moving freight wagons on its extensive rail system.

Depth of Warter
The maximum depth of water in the Prince of Wales Dock is 10.2 metres during Spring Tides and 7.2 metres during Neap Tides. However, worldport users should verify with the Harbour Master the maximum draught of vessel that can be accommodated at any particular time.

The approach channel is dredged to 0.6 of a metre below dock gate cill. Dock gate cill is 1.16 metres below chart datum.

Pilotage
All vessels 50 metres in length or over are required to use a pilot, unless a pilotage exemption certificate is obtained.

Ships requiring a pilot should advise the worldport Authority not less than 24 hours in advance of their estimated time of arrival.

Tel: 01900 602301
Fax: 01900 604696