Page 16 - Sphere No.27 (Sep 2010)

14 Sphere
“People have worked here for 20 years plus. If they didn’t want
to work here they would go. There are well structured training
progammes here.
“The company also gets very involved with the community.
As well as the work experience programme, we also attend
careers fairs at schools in the region. We want the next genera-
tion to learn about us.”
Donations to schools
HPH also helps out schools financially with worthy projects.
The Grange Community Primary School, for example, was re-
cently nominated as a “dock school” and given GBP1,860 from
the HPH Dock School Programme, money which will be used
to fund the creation of a “science pond” to help study the water
cycle and food chains.
“The programme gives our ports the chance to ‘adopt’ and
support local schools, and it allows the schools to benefit from
links with one of the area’s biggest employers,” said David Gled-
hill, Chief Executive Officer of Hutchison Ports (UK) Limited.
“We hope that their students find the end product both educa-
tional and fun to use.”
Felixstowe port itself is already the largest and busiest con-
tainer port in the UK, with great road and rail links to all parts
of the country. When current expansion work is completed
early next year, it will have a new deep-water container termi-
nal, taking the total quay length to almost 1.3 kilometres, and a
third rail terminal is planned.
A new deep-water container terminal is also planned for
Bathside Bay in Harwich, which will extend the quayside
length by 1.4 kilometres. In addition, the Harwich Interna-
tional Container Terminal scheme will make it one of the larg-
est container ports in the UK, almost doubling the total quay
length to three kilometres, and enabling the port to handle up
to four deep-sea container vessels simultaneously.
That expansion has a predetermined and finite goal, whereas
in the area of telecommunications, nobody can accurately
predict the trends in phone and Internet usage over the next
five or 10 years. The only absolute certainty is that there will be
more demand for mobile technology which is where HWL will
benefit in a major way.
Its 3G network, known simply as 3, has proved to be a true
challenger brand in the UK, building the biggest 3G network
and driving the growth of mobile broadband. 3 alone accounts
for around half of the UK’s mobile broadband traffic and
came top of pollster YouGov’s July consumer survey of mobile
broadband customers. Off the back of its pioneering network
infrastructure sharing deal, it will have a massive 12,500-site
network by the end of the third quarter as 3 continues to fuel
the uptake of mobile broadband in the UK with great pricing
and careful investment.
The business has challenged both the market and the
regulator to bring down costs for consumers and to allow true
competition to flourish. With the prospect of a real reduction
of mobile termination rates in the UK, 3 has launched a
HPH is known as a company that looks after its
employees; people have worked here for 20 years plus