Essex: huge super-port will add £3.2bn to UK economy

And up to 32,000 jobs.

The BBC reports that in Dubai-based DP World is developing a replacement for the lost Port of London at Thurrock in Essex. 

DP World grew out of Dubai Ports by acquiring CSX World Terminals in 2005 and the iconic British brand Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, known to all as P&O, in 2006. 

Now, the Anglophile Emiratis have begun a project which will transform English export capability. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, described the DP World project London Gateway as being able to "help Britain maintain its competitiveness, drive productivity, and crucially strengthen our links with Asia and beyond."

Three things:

• First, this would never have been necessary if England hadn't lost the Port of London's capacity as once the largest port in the world. In the 1970s much port traffic was lost to Rotterdam's Europoort due to a dispute involving English dockers' resistance to containerisation. But we do have to thank Michael Heseltine, Paul Reichmann and Sir Nigel Broakes for the redevolpment of the moribund docklands into the world-beating financial centre which is Canary Wharf.
• Secondly, if P&O had not been acquired by DP, the Dubai business would never have grown to become the hugely successful global port operator it is today.
• Thirdly, if DP couldn't foresee the profitability of establishing major port facilities in southern England, clearly the firm would have invested elsewhere.

This is a major coup for Thurrock in Essex, which over time will handle a 3.5 million container capacity. Thurrock itself is the a culurally-orientated commuter town of 160,000 people (300,000 in the wider area), but according to the BBC "the Thames Estuary development has already created 600 jobs and it plans to increase that number by a further 1,000 over the coming months. Seven hundred of the new posts will be in construction, while the other 300 are described as port jobs. The firm (DP) estimates that eventually, the port and a neighbouring logistics centre will help create 32,000 jobs adding £3.2bn to the UK economy each year."

Why is it so hard to find uplifting stories in the media these days? This is one which should have been headlined, surely?

Thurrock will boom as a result of this development, and UK exports to the Middle and Far East will grow exponentially. That is good news.

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