THE Manchester ship canal has been re-born as a major haulage route for a supermarket for the first time in over forty years.

Tesco has announced it has started using two barges to carry 1,600,000 litres of wine into Manchester each week in a bid to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

The waterway initiative will take 50 lorries off the road a week and save a total of 700,000 miles of haulage journeys on British roads every year.

Manchester Ship Canal, which was opened by Queen Victoria in 1894, is currently used primarily for the transportation of scrap metal and grain.

But this is the first time a major retailer has used the canal in over four decades to connect Liverpool's Royal Seaforth Container Terminal with the Irlam Container Terminal, in Salford.

Waterways are widely regarded as an environmentally friendly way of transporting non-perishable freight as barges use approximately 80 per cent less fuel than lorries to transport the same load.

Laurie McIlwee, Tesco's distribution director, said that the scheme could initiate a new golden age for the Manchester Ship Canal.

"This move will be like taking a step back to the pre-car days of the late Victorian era, when a lot of cargo was still transported by canal, but is a step forward in helping to address today's important environmental issues," he said.

"We are continually reviewing alternative green methods of transporting cargo and this is our first waterborne project, but we are already looking at other areas where we can move freight on waterways.

Environmentally friendly

"Reducing carbon emissions and looking at how we can make the business more environmentally friendly is a priority and by 2012 we aim to halve the amount of carbon emitted per case of goods delivered."

Once the shipments, containing wine from Australia, California, Chile and Argentina, have been transported the 40 miles to Irlam, they will then be taken to Kingsland Wines and Spirits bottling site, which is less than half a mile away.

Tesco's `new world' wine shipments have previously arrived in the UK at various southern ports before being driven to the Manchester bottling depot.

The shuttle service is being operated by Manchester-based Seaborn Container Line, which has invested £1.8million in the two tugs to transport wine.

Seaborn MD Graham Salt described the scheme as a perfect example of how a firm's carbon footprint can be dramatically reduced by switching from road to waterborne freight.

"The Manchester Ship Canal is effectively a watery motorway which links the sea to Manchester," he said.

"The potential is enormous as every container carried up the Manchester Ship Canal takes a truck off the road and reduces the firm's carbon footprint by 80 per cent."

The scheme also represents a partnership between the firms and Peel Ports, which owns Manchester Ship Canal.
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