ABSTRACT
The overall traffic of the Port of London at around 50 million tonnes has not changed significantly over the last 30 years but the manner in which that cargo is handled has changed dramatically. In the early 1960s most of the general cargo was in break-bulk form and handling was labour intensive, of low productivity with slow ship turn-round time and consequently only small ships could be used. Land use in the docks was very intensive. With the unitisation and especially the containerisation of cargo, the handling became mechanised and capital intensive, productivity was greatly increased and ship turn-round speeded up – larger ships could be used and far more land was required with a premium on high capacity transport links.
