TTS Port Equipment is heading an alliance of leading industry names to bid for the prestigious London Gateway Port automated container terminal project.

The Horizontal Transportation Alliance sees TTS Port Equipment working with ABB Crane Systems, Siemens Hybrid Drives, Hamburg Port Consulting (HPC), Danaher Motion, and MAFI Transport Systems to submit a proposal for the project.

London Gateway Port aims to accommodate forecast growth in UK deep-sea container demand until at least 2020, ensuring certainty and stability by delivering additional container handling capacity. The container berths will have an overall capacity of 3.5 million TEU per annum, making this the largest facility of its kind in the UK. As part of this project, the port plans to develop an automated container terminal system, including automated horizontal container transport between the ship-to-shore cranes and automated stacking cranes.

'Safe, rapid transfer of goods in harbour is crucial to the efficiency and profitability of both the port and the shipping companies,' says Edwin Konopatsch, Sales Division Manager for port equipment at MAFI. 'By working together with TTS, we can ensure that London Gateway Port's container transport system offers optimal efficiency, cost-effectiveness and capacity.'

The alliance is tailored to meet the exacting demands of London Gateway Port, combining TTS' extensive global expertise in the design, manufacture and supply of port equipment with the key strengths of its partners. ABB Crane Systems is a market leader in automated systems for stacking cranes and in container crane automation, while MAFI is a leading manufacturer of transport systems for industry and seaports and Siemens Hybrid Drives has global expertise in electrical engineering. Danaher Motion is a leading automated guided vehicle (AGV) system provider, which specialises in electromagnetic, mechanical and control technologies. The company's experience extends across the pulp and paper, steel, food and automotive segments, where more than 12,000 Danahere Motion equipped AGVs have been supplied. These strengths are complemented by HPC's 30 years of experience in port and transport sector management consultancy, especially with port automation from the well-known Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG projects at Altenwerder and Burchardkai.

'This is a major project, demanding efficient use of a range of specialist expertise to design, build and implement an automated transport system that will enable London Gateway Port to handle growing demand for UK deep sea container traffic,' says Lennart Svensson, Managing Director of TTS Port Equipment AB.

'We are very pleased to be working with TTS Port Equipment and its partners in the Horizontal Transport Alliance. For Siemens, this application is an important expansion for our environmentally friendly ELFA hybrid drive system, currently used worldwide in various transport applications,' says Eugen Holl, General Manager of the Hybrid Drives group at Siemens AG. 'By combining the expertise of all the companies, we can create an automated transport system that will serve the port as it accommodates increasing container traffic well into the future.'