Victoria Dock

The redevelopment of Victoria Dock is the centrepiece of our plan to improve the flow of freight through the Port of Melbourne. The Westgate Ports development has brought back to life a long redundant site that faithfully served Melbourne's port operations for more than a century.

Central to the development is the state-of-the-art Container Logistics Centre, which is located just 500 metres from the entry point to the international terminals.

Victoria Docks

The Container Logistics Centre services freight forwarders, customs brokers and the general import/export community. It paves the way for locally manufactured goods to find their way to international markets as well as the import of highly desirable luxury goods.

Westgate Ports Services provides clients with a 'one-stop-shop' for all container-related services.

These include:

FCL & LCL transport;
a full range of AQIS and Customs services to be available;
container packing, unpacking and storage; and
cross-docking, storage and distribution (22,500 m² of warehousing)

Victoria Dock Rail Terminal

The rail terminal at Victoria Dock will create a vital link between Port of Melbourne and the prime import and export freight catchment areas of south-eastern Australia.

The Victoria Dock Rail Terminal will consist of three dual-gauge rail tracks. Track 1 will accommodate a train length of up to 650 metres, track 2 accommodates a train length of 580 metres and track 3 is the engine repositioning track. The terminal will be able to support at any one time a train consist which carries in excess of 160 TEU.

This sits at the heart of our strategy to have more container freight on rail, reducing the reliance on trucks on our main arterial roads, and to generate benefits and cost savings that will directly benefit our clients and the broader Victorian community.

Inland Ports/Rail Links

Westgate Ports is developing a network of inland ports that will be linked via a mix of existing and upgraded rail infrastructure. Victoria Dock will be the central hub for rail movements between our sites at Altona, in Melbourne's west, and Lyndhurst in Melbourne's south-east, as well as a link to intermodal hubs in regional Victoria and interstate.

Our vision is in line with Victorian government targets to achieve 30 per cent containerised rail freight modeshare at Port of Melbourne by 2010.

The inland hubs will allow the transfer of containers to and from Westgate Ports' customers, free of the congestion associated with the Port of Melbourne precinct. Delivered directly to the inland hubs by rail, containers can be handled more quickly and efficiently and delivered short local distances, thereby avoiding the heavily congested arterial roadways.

Victoria Docks

The inland hubs at Altona and Lyndhurst offer the additional advantage of being able to cater for clients wishing to operate warehouse facilities within the hub precinct. Lyndhurst can accommodate 600,000m² of warehouse, and Altona 100,000m². Once on site, specialised straddle lifters will be used to transfer containers directly from rail to warehouse.

With the bulk of the land-based distance being travelled by rail, containers are able to be loaded to maximum cubic capacity, for clients who locate their warehouses at inland hubs, significantly reducing costs for end-users and greatly increasing efficiencies against the weight limitations imposed on containers delivered by road.

As road congestion worsens, Westgate Ports sees rail as the only option for the container logistics market if the Port of Melbourne is to maintain its position as Australia's leading port.

Our clients in the freight community, as well as the community at large, can look forward to the benefits that result from moving containerised freight by rail to our inland hubs, where they are processed before moving to their final destination by road. This will greatly reduce truck traffic on arterial routes, and provide Port of Melbourne with a sustainable way to handle the forecast increases in trade volumes in coming years.

"...a world-class cargo terminal"