Castle enters haulage
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byJuliet Parish • Castle Cement entered the hireor-reward sector last week with a one-year contract to haul 50,000 tonnes of granulated slag for East Coast Slag Products.
The Peterborough-based cement giant will transport the slag from ECSP's plant in Teesport, Cleveland, to the North.
It is now looking for more third-party work for its transport division, which has been renamed Castle Transport Services.
"A slack in demand for cement and the re-negotiated drivers' terms and conditions have given us spare road haulage capacity," says logistics director Jonathan Dale. But the company plans to recruit eight more drivers to fill jobs made vacant through natural wasteage last year.
"Castle Cement's own business amounts to three million tonnes a year so we already have a very large bulk powder fleet," says Dale. "It is a natural progession for us".
Castle Transport Services employs 190 drivers with 18 subcontractors who will take on the ECSP work, which was previously carried by road. The division operates 200 vehicles, most of which are tankers with some flatbeds.
Work for Castle Cement includes moving the 210,000 tonnes of freight a year which was transferred from rail to road at the end of last year on routes from Lancashire to Scotland and the North-East Rail is used to carry an annual 120,000 tonnes of freight from Ketton, Lincs to Kings Cross, London, to avoid road congestion in the capital. The contract with British Rail is up for renewal next year, and Dale warns that if BR does not come up with a significant rate cut the company will consider switching to road.