The sinkhole at the £400m Liverpool2 terminal on the Mersey will be repaired within weeks, the port’s boss says.
The massive terminal, which will allow Liverpool to welcome the world’s biggest ships , was opened last November to great fanfare. Its giant red cranes can be seen for miles around.
But in February the ECHO revealed that a sinkhole, which appeared to be 50ft deep, had opened up on the quayside.
Repair work has taken several months but now Peel Ports chief executive Mark Whitworth says it is “just a few weeks” from completion and should be done by the end of the month.
The port boss says the hole hasn’t affected operations at the terminal. And he said that the terminal was still on track to attract huge ships to Liverpool.
He told the ECHO: “At the moment we’re going through more of the cosmetic work and the latter stages of the repair. It’s all gone according to plan.
“We were doing some additional testing along the quay wall and looking at whether there were was anything that we just need to take another look at.
“We’ve always believed it was an isolated incident... and that it was going to be very specifically constrained to that area. That’s proven to be the case.
“I’d rather have not had the problem, but it really hasn’t affected our ramp-up.
“We still have the trial shipments coming through. They’ve worked incredibly well.”
Several ECHO readers have asked why Liverpool2 hasn’t yet seen a stream of giant ships since the terminal opened. But Peel has reassured local people that talks are well under way behind the scenes.
Peel Ports announced last month that it was pushing ahead with plans to expand the new terminal and to add another three cranes to the five already there.
Mr Whitworth said the move showed he was confident that the port would win deals with shipping lines that would lead to more larger ships stopping here.
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