DURING a speech at Aurizon’s 2023 annual general meeting, the company’s managing director and CEO Andrew Harding outlined some plans for a so-called “land-bridge” to rail containers between Darwin Port and the southern states.
Mr Harding said that since sharing the land-bridging concept during the company’s June investor day, there has been “positive engagement with the market”.
“The cranes we are installing at Darwin port represent a significant milestone in realising or stage-one aspirations with land-bridging and provide confidence in our capability to deliver the new supply-chain offering to potential customers,” Mr Harding said.
In the 2023 financial year, Aurizon ordered mobile harbour cranes, reach stackers, container wagons and heavy-haul locomotives.
Mr Harding said Aurizon would “leverage these new assets as we look to develop land-bridging solutions for customers”.
“Our target for stage one is 100,000 TEUs per year. That’s within a market of some 8 million TEUs of throughput at major Australian ports annually,” Mr Harding said.
“And, we estimate that our supply chain for land-bridging will be up to 40% quicker when compared to key shipping routes into Australian ports. In this context we believe our aspirations are very achievable.”
Mr Harding said the company was taking a staged approach to land-bridging to manage business and investment risk.
“Limited additional rollingsotck is required for stage one, and it is the exact same rollingstock that we currently use across bulk and containerised freight,” he said.
And Aurizon chairman of the board Tim Poole said the company would take a “staged, low-risk approach in developing this business”.
“Our railway goes right to the wharf at the port [in Darwin], where we have a lease and a stevedoring licence,” he said.
“This integrated rail-port supply chain opens up further opportunities for import and export traffic through Darwin, Australia’s closest port for our Asian trading partners.”
