A multimodal incentive has earned multinational port operator DP World a brace of accolades from the rail freight industry. The Dubai-headquartered operation has been named Business of the Year by the Rail Freight Group (RFG), the representative body of the UK industry. The operator also walked away with a second award for Driving Rail Freight Growth.

DP World has port interests from Nanaimo, British Columbia, to Sydney, New South Wales. However, it’s the company’s initiative in a project at the Port of Southampton that has caught the imagination. It has successfully encouraged freight haulage clients to switch from road to rail. That modal shift has brought the company a slew of recognition. Now, it has a brace of awards to show off for its initiative.

Significant investment

The motives behind the DP World Southampton modal shift programme may not have been directed at the attention of the Rail Freight Group. However, that has certainly been an outcome of the programme. DP World was named Business of the Year at the recent RFG Awards. It also won the Driving Rail Freight Growth award for its significant investment in its ambitious project to improve modal shift.

Customers at the port have been offered a financial incentive to use rail freight. It’s not quite an informal bung to ditch the truck and get on the tracks. It is, however, a quite legitimate endeavour that’s proved popular. The share of freight units being moved by rail from the port of Southampton in the first six months of the project increased by two-thirds.

Net zero logistics organisation

The modal shift programme has been the highest-profile part of a concerted campaign by DP World. Both of its UK ports are now diesel-free following an operational switch to HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil). The fourth berth at DP World’s other UK location, London Gateway, is the world’s first all-electric berth. The eight straddle carriers – the specialist mobile cranes that handle containers on the quayside – are all electric.

DP World has been the recipient of a string of awards already this year. For their work at Southampton, the company had already picked up Port of the Year and Sustainable Business of the Year at separate industry events. “Our ambition is to become the most sustainable logistics business in the UK,” said Ernst Schulze, their UK Chief Executive. “We will mitigate the impacts of climate change by becoming a net zero logistics organisation by 2050 and continue to do everything we can to help customers on their own decarbonisation journeys.”