Peel Ports Group Chief Executive Officer David Huck has articulated a strategic vision for ports as central enablers of the UK construction sector, arguing that port-centric supply chains offer a demonstrably smarter path through the cost, carbon and congestion challenges confronting the industry.
Speaking against the backdrop of falling construction output, with ONS figures showing a 11.8 percent quarter-on-quarter decline in new orders in the second quarter of 2026, Huck identified the movement of construction materials as an obvious starting point for overcoming efficiency and cost barriers.
He pointed to structural shifts in the market over the past five years, including consolidation in the aggregate and cement sectors, the closure of domestic cement production and a growing transition to imported cargo moving by marine, as factors that have fundamentally repositioned ports in the construction supply chain.
Central to Peel Ports’ response is what Huck calls the port-to-project approach, developed over the past five to six years.
The strategy transforms port estates into virtual quarries serving as port-centric consolidation and processing hubs for building materials including aggregates, cement, steel, timber and large infrastructure components.
By handling significant tonnage parcels at deep-water locations before distributing directly to project sites, the approach eliminates multiple layers of cost, carbon and congestion from the construction supply chain while delivering economies of scale not achievable through traditional routing.
Peel Ports has developed a Sustainable Construction Partner programme linking materials and logistics suppliers including Ecocem, Holcim and Hercules with end users, with a pilot hub at Port of London Medway supporting schemes including the Lower Thames Crossing.
The group’s North West assets are positioned to support the HyNet North West carbon capture and storage cluster, and it has been involved in the Sizewell C nuclear power station and the Drax Power Station biomass import terminal at Gladstone Dock.
The planned Port of Warrington, a GBP 350 million multi-modal freight terminal, would revive a rail freight link to the West Coast Main Line, while a GBP 750 million construction framework awarded in June 2025 will run to 2033.
Huck acknowledged the challenge of persuading a sector accustomed to established routes to rethink its logistics approach, describing it as pushing an elephant up the stairs, but noted that large supply chain players are increasingly recognising the strategic importance of ports to their logistics solutions.
He expressed ambition to deepen the proposition further toward port-based batching and concrete casting, bringing more of the construction process to the port environment rather than moving everything inland.
