Teesport

Teesport is a large sea port located in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, Northern England. Owned by PD Ports, it is located approximately 1 mile (2 km) inland from the North Sea and 4 mile (6 km) east of Middlesbrough on the River Tees. Teesport is currently the third largest port in the United Kingdom, and amongst the ten biggest in Western Europe, handling over 56 million tonnes of domestic and international cargo per year. Teesport is the logistical hub for the commodity chemical and steel companies that are members of the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC).

Landside clients include Hanson plc who operate a major cement works, and a landfill site which uses non hazardous waste to backfill the site of the former Tees Dock facility. Tesco operate a 1200000 feet (365760 m) high bay non food storage and distribution facility at Teesport. The currently under construction Teesport Renewable Energy Plant is scheduled to come into operation in 2020.

In February 2008, PD Ports were given planning permission to redevelop the former Shell Oil refinery in a £350 million scheme that would create a new container facility, entitled the Northern Gateway Terminal, which would raise TEU capacity of the entire port to 1.5 million TEU. However, due to the 2008 economic downturn, PD Ports put back the start of development until 2010 at the earliest, with the programme now scheduled to complete in 2020.

PD Ports leases a number of former British Rail Class 08 shunting locomotives from RMS Locotec to move rail traffic around the port, and to/from the two main associated marshalling yards. The port is directly rail connected to the East Coast Main Line and the Durham Coast Line, and close to the A66 trans pennine route, and other major trunk roads.

The first developed facility on the current Teesport location was a Royal Navy depot during World War I. This allowed the allocated six British E class submarines to operate further into the North Sea during their defence, attack and mine laying operations against the Imperial German Navy. Between 1965 and 1968, three oil refineries were developed close to Teesport, thanks to the Phillips Petroleum's development of the Ekofisk oil field in the North Sea. This facility was served by what became known as Tees Dock, with the whole docks facility designed around Panamax scale ships. as a result of the pipeline petrochemicals traffic still today represents about 50% of the cargo through Teesport, around 26 million tonnes a year.