“The tallest cranes in the world meet a container ship the size of four football pitches “… Business As Usual In Essex

September

18

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The Guardian has a big article this week on DP World London Gateway: “the latest international trophy of the oil-rich emirate of Dubai, and one of the biggest privately funded infrastructure projects the UK has ever seen. It is a gargantuan undertaking (on the scale of Crossrail, Terminal 5 or HS2) that?s projected to have a bigger economic impact than the Olympics ? but you might not even know it was happening.”

Once the capital?s lifeblood, London?s docks have long since faded to little more than a garnish of maritime nostalgia on riverside real estate. Where once burly dockers hauled crates of exotic cargo, now bankers engage in international trade of a less visible kind. The physical economy of heaving stuff to and fro has been replaced by the streamlined global flow of finance, conducted in anonymous glass towers.

Or so the story goes.

It might come as a surprise to learn, then, that London?s docks are back ? on a bigger scale than ever before. Running almost 3km along the Thames estuary is a ?1.5bn new megaport that has literally redrawn the coastline of Essex, and wants to make equally radical shifts to the UK?s consumer supply chain.

Full article here

One notable comment on the Guardian website is:

As much as we must be grateful for the belated recognition, I imagine the people who operate Tilbury and the DOZENS of other quays up and down the Thames will be a bit miffed to see themselves dismissed as ‘maritime nostalgia’. The sheer ignorance of Maritime UK from a national broadsheet is as pathetic as it’s upsetting.

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