Forth Ports in renewable power projects joint venture

Alistair Osborne, Business Editor
Last Updated: 1:20am BST 01/07/2008

Forth Ports unveiled a renewable power joint venture with Scottish and Southern Energy and said it was seeing no impact on volumes from slowing economic growth.
The owner of seven UK ports said the first project for the new venture, called Forth Energy, would be a £12m investment in four 2MW wind turbines at Tilbury.
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Charles Hammond, the ports group's chief executive, said Forth Energy had identified possible projects with a total installed capacity of more than 150MW.
They are all located on the Forth port estate, which also includes Dundee and Leith, Rosyth and Grangemouth in the Firth of Forth.
"There's a lot of potential on our sites and there's a good fit between energy and some of our core businesses," Mr Hammond said, adding that future investment could run to "tens of millions of pounds".
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He said the joint venture was also looking to participate in a project by Tilbury Green Power to develop a "multi-fuel" plant in the docks, where a planning application is under way.
The new joint venture was unveiled alongside a bullish first-half trading statement, flagging that interim results were likely to show "strong growth". The shares rose 72p to £17.35.
Mr Hammond said problems in the banking and financial services markets were yet to feed through into lower volumes on the quayside.
"There is still a need for importing and exporting basic commodities. We are not seeing any downturn in demand," he said.
Ro-ro traffic and containers through Tilbury are ahead of last year, while piped cargoes through the Scottish ports were at their highest level for four years.
Containers at Grangemouth rose 10pc from the first six months of 2007.