Tesco claims its Teesport Distribution Centre, set to open in August, will cut the number of truck journeys it makes by 12,000 a year. The company says the new facility in the North-East will mean that goods arriving at the port by sea will no longer need to be transported to the firm's existing non-food distribution centre in Coventry by road.
"There will still be a requirement for HGV drivers, although there will be a move from lorries to rail," adds a Tesco spokesman. "The move to Teesport will reduce the numbers of trucks on the road but drivers will be offered the opportunity to be redeployed."
The Coventry site is due to close in October and Tesco states that all 200 workers will be offered packages to relocate to Middlesbrough.
Once the Teesport site is running, goods will be transported to other parts of the country by rail using the port's on-site rail infrastructure, before being moved by truck to stores in the final leg of the journey.
The supermarket giant says there will be 800 employees at the £130m, 910,000ft2 Teesport site - its first purpose-built import storage facility. Stobart Group, which runs a national distribution service for Tesco, declined to comment on how the new Teesport facility would affect its own transport operations.
