‘Pinning’ is the process of manually placing a twist lock into the corner casting of a container to keep it in place during a journey at sea.
For the past 50 years, twist locks were put in and taken out on the quayside, directly underneath container-bearing cranes, a hazardous environment where heavy machinery and people operate in close proximity.
The new remote pinning station at DP World Southampton is the first at any straddle carrier port in the world.
The station is the size of two football pitches and is set 150 yards from the quay to further protect workers.
The remote model enables the straddle carriers, which move containers handled by the quay cranes, to take each one from berth to pinning station.
Steve McCrindle, port operations director at DP World, said:“We are delighted that our remote pinning station will make Southampton the first port of its kind to operate this way anywhere in the world.
“Along with providing the safest possible environment for our vital staff, we are confident it will also lead to improved productivity maintaining Southampton’s status as Britain’s most productive port, giving customers a faster service than any of our competitors, and driving our end-to-end logistics offering.”
DP Word’s ambition is to move 35 containers an hour.
The Southampton hub already achieved two successive records for container handling earlier this year.
In April, the team recorded 9,416 container moves in just 88 hours from the Hapag-Lloyd AG vessel Al Nefud. This was made possible by a new operating model, which enabled workers to concentrate more cranes on the vessel while continuing to service other customers at the same time.