HMT Shipping to move to new site after continued business growth

Palletline-member HMT Shipping is to move from its Longbridge, Preston home to a new site near the city at Roman Way due to a surge in business.

The operator, which started out serving the construction market moving flatbed-loads across the Irish Sea before diversifying into curtainsiders and pallets, purchased the site in September and should be in by January.

HMT Shipping is currently fitting three extra high doors to the 85,000ft² building, which has 55,000ft² warehousing space. It also plans a three-bay maintenance facility on site.

“It will give us significantly more warehousing space,” said Mark Gallagher, UK general manager at HMT Shipping. “While warehousing is not a core part of our business it is a nice add on that we can offer customers when they need the extra space.”

HMT Shipping, part of HMT Group, also has a site in Heysham, Lancashire, as well as Northern Ireland (Warrenpoint) and a sales office in Dublin.

It runs more than 400 trailers (curtainsider and flats). It also has around 44 artics in its Volvo-heavy fleet as well as more than 20 rigid vehicles, which are a mix of MAN, Daf and Volvo. It covers the LA, PR, FY, BB and IM postcodes for Palletline.