The upgrade is a bid to counter the proposed $1.9 billion intermodal freight terminal by Qube Logistics and rail group Aurizon, at Moorebank, in the south west.
Asciano, which owns the country’s biggest stevedoring business, Patrick, and the Pacific National rail network, wants to develop its own sites, allowing the company to win a bigger share of the handling costs.
A developed site in St Marys could shift up to a quarter of the containers the Patrick stevedoring business handles at Port Botany off Sydney roads.
CEO John Mullen said the Asciano sites at Chullora and St Marys were better located near the existing freight precincts where customers already have warehouses and distribution centres.
Mr Mullen said freight would be sent to an existing intermodal terminal at Chullora – used now for interstate freight – while work would begin next year on upgrading the St Mary’s site, which lacked most facilities, except a rail siding.
The site has the potential to handle up to 300,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEU) or shipping containers a year, which represent about a quarter of the throughput at the Patrick stevedoring operation, the largest at Port Botany.
