URBAN DELIVERIES
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• The sSRA has awarded £2.9m to Blue Circle Industries, Metalair FelcIbincler and Babcock Rail to develop a piggyback system for the distribution of cement products into congested urban areas. It will use the money to build 22 inter. modal M3 wagons using rail wagons to move intermodal road tankers.
Blue Circle planning director David Sims says the company is committed to this project. A rail terminal has already been built at Liskeard, Cornwall and a road-railshipping terminal is to set up in Manchester.
Initially the company plans to shift So% of its road traffic between Hope in Derbyshire and Ipswich (a 340-mile round trip) onto rail. We are not anti-road or anti-rail," says Sims. "It's business: we are looking at getting deliveries to customers as quickly and cheaply as possible."
By 2003 Blue Circle plans to raise the proportion of cement it moves by rail from 56.5% to 27%, equating to almost two million tonnes a year