ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Humber Estuary ports, the largest concentration of port activity in the United Kingdom (UK). It examines the changing nature of port ownership, linking this to wider debates on the changing nature of the global economy. The chapter presents the impact of logistics developments on UK ports, and in particular considers the development of port-centric logistics. The UK is a major world economy, a member of the 'Group of Eight leading industrialized nations (G8), and ranked world's sixth largest exporter in value terms. A major assessment of the Hull and Humber city region by IBM Global Business Services identified three target sectors for economic activity in region: renewable energies, healthcare and biomedical technologies, and value-added logistics. Indeed some UK ports are actively encouraging companies to locate distribution centres at ports rather than in their traditional locations, which tend to be in geographically central, inland locations, and which often suffer from congestion in their surrounding road networks.
