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For those of you who have visited Teesside, you will have seen the Blue Dragonfly on the river. Or perhaps you'd recognise it as the large metal item that was exported to the USA by the lads from 'Auf Wiedersehen Pet ' 20 years ago - of course, Teesside's Transporter Bridge is world famous.
I had the pleasure of visiting Teesport and meeting their top team, including CEO David Robinson, Directors Geoff Lippet and John Gibson, in their magnificent boardroom this week. The Boardroom is a testament to a fantastic port. The second largest in UK and in Europe's top ten, it is a deep water port with global links .
The Boardroom houses magnificent stained glass windows of local landmarks as well as the crest and shields of local councils who have supported the port in years gone by. The oil paintings are magnificent, depicting great ships of old coming and going on the Tees.
More recently, a tour of the port highlights huge volumes of steel being exported from Redcar (SSI) to Thailand, Potash Exports from Boulby, inbound tea from India and it also boasts Tesco and Asda's largest warehouse distribution units in the UK .
The port has a rail terminal with connection to the East Coast mainline and handles RoRo ferries, container ships and 500,000 containers per year. More than 5000 ships per year and up to 40 million tons of cargo all pass through Teesside.
It’s a national asset that we need to support and develop further. If you fancy a trip to see the Blue Dragonfly, I'd highly recommend it !