Published on Wednesday, 20 February 2019 at 12:00:00 AM
The Shire of Ashburton welcomes the latest maritime freight link research recently conducted by the Pilbara Development Commission and the City of Karratha, which further highlights the Pilbara as a commercially beneficial location for maritime services.
Over the past four and half years the Shire of Ashburton has been working to develop extended infrastructure at the existing Beadon Bay Creek facility, with construction completed for the new Onslow Marine Support Base (OMSB) almost a year ago and now the channel optimisation due for completion mid-2019.
With this completion operators of the Beadon Creek facility are well advanced in the establishment of a regular direct freight liner service encompassing container and breakbulk services into Onslow from transhipment ports in South East Asia.
Additionally stakeholders in the Onslow Marine Support Base have established a freight profile on the road network from Onslow to determine the maximum sized cargo that can be received through the Beadon Creek facility to the greater Pilbara region. The service will provide reduced freight costs and delivery times into the Pilbara with the intention to begin mid-late 2019.
Plans for the OMSB development have been well received by local, state and national organisations which will broaden the commercial, tourism and local offerings to be delivered directly from Onslow. Now operational, the OMSB facility is successfully reinvigorating a number of local industries which have in the past suffered due to the lack of logistical capabilities.
Shire President Kerry White said the Pilbara is indeed well situated for a diverse range of maritime services offering significant operational savings, improved transit times and more efficient service delivery.
“We have been working hard to ensure the development of the Onslow Marine Support Base at Beadon Creek as we know it offers logistical as well as cost efficiencies to a range of maritime services. To see it now being constructed is an achievement we know will deliver ongoing positive benefits to our local and state economies.”
“The existing support received from a wide range of large and small scale operations, as well as the PDC’s latest research, further endorses what industry have been telling us for years – that there is far more to the Pilbara than the resources industry.”
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