New intermodal terminal announced

From the AFR 8/8/23
The new Somerton hub is being built on the site of an existing rail terminal at the Austrak Business Park, whose tenants include Coles, Kraft, Linfox, Qube and Boral.
An existing intermodal terminal at South Dynon in inner-city Melbourne operated by Pacific National and Qube, which handles most of Melbourne’s freight, will be closing at the end of the decade.

Mr Maharaj wants to snare a share of the trains carrying hundreds of thousands of freight containers annually that today pass through South Dynon. “That volume will have to go somewhere,” he added.

And if a plan by rail group Aurizon, which has sold its intermodal terminals, to create a land bridge between Darwin and east coast ports in Sydney and Melbourne actually works, Somerton could benefit. “It means more volume through our terminals and more volume on the rail freight network,” Mr Maharaj said.

Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims has been pushing for freight hubs to be operated by organisations that have no connection to rail companies that haul freight, such as Pacific National and Aurizon.

This could be of huge benefit to Aurizon....instead of freight going though a PN owned terminal it will go through an agnostic terminal allowing AZJ to pick up (literally) containers more effectively. Of course it didn't seem to help the share price today, so I could be (as seems to be the norm) wrong.