Peel Ports has been reviewing achievements to date, just seven months after it opened its new biomass terminal. So far, it has dispatched over 400 freight journeys from its base at the Port of Liverpool to Yorkshire's Drax power station. Its director, David Huck, announced the impressive milestone this month in Hamburg at a keynote speech at the TOC Europe conference.

Drax is the UK's and Europe's biggest carbon recovery project, and the single biggest generator of green energy. It generates nearly 2,000 MW of green energy, which is sufficient to power over three million homes, and its outputs represent nearly 12pc of Britain's total renewable energy generation as a whole. The plant is powered by sustainable biomass wood chips which are transported from the Peel Ports biomass terminal through to Drax directly via rail. Each of the scheduled services holds c.1,799 tons of compressed pellets that are sourced from the USA as an industrial by-product.

The building of the terminal has already created almost 50 permanent and skilled jobs, bringing wider economic benefits to the area.

Huck explained that the biomass project was key to Peel Ports for various reasons. Primarily, it offered value-added use of the port's existing and extensive rail infrastructure whilst supporting the company's objective of moving freight transport away from the road and towards more sustainable transport methods such as rail and water. Additionally, it was a key way of supporting the Northern Powerhouse initiative and linking up east and west.

The firm's main market is to provide effective logistics solutions between Liverpool and Yorkshire, which is a region packed with manufacturers, supply-chain operators and consumers alike. Certainly, the partnership is providing a fascinating case study, and it is inspiring further partnerships in the renewable energy and logistics fields.