After more than 20 years of operation, Australia’s first automated container terminal continues to push the boundaries of what is possible as the automation has seen truck turnaround times reduced from “hours” to often less than 30 minutes.

The Australian chapter of the International Cargo Handling Association (ICHCA) recently organised a tour of Patricks’ Brisbane AutoStrad facility, the first terminal in the world to deploy Australian-designed automated straddle carriers.

Patrick Terminals is a leading Australian container terminal operator. It handles more than 3.5 million TUE annually at ports in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle.

Opening in December 2005 at the Port of Brisbane at Fisherman Islands, the site of Brisbane AutoStrad was previously a mixed cargo facility before becoming a dedicated container terminal.

In July 2009, an extension of the AutoStrad was officially opened and included the precinct of buildings and the control tower which dominates the site.

The Brisbane AutoStrad became the trial site for the automation technology which was initially developed by Patricks in partnership with Sydney University.

The site now boasts 35 automated straddle carriers, each a 20m outreach.

Matt Hollamby, terminal manager, explains the automated processes means “of the 35 [machines] prowling up and down, we know where each of them is, and indeed, each piece of cargo, each piece of infrastructure, to within two centimetres”.

Each truck is manifested the night before pick up, and when it arrives, passes under some optical character recognition cameras on gantries, which then make the export documentation live in the system. 

The system validates the registration, reads the required box number and identifies its location.

“Fun fact, when we first opened, you know, many years ago, that truck waiting area tended to be full,” Hollamby states. “There's room for 50 trucks here. It's now empty. Why?

“Because of the improvement in the road interface, the land side interface of the terminal as such that trucks move through here invariably in less than 30 minutes. In fact, last week, our turnaround time was 23 minutes for an intensity of 1.8 containers per truck.”

When a truck at Brisbane AutoStrad reaches its gated bay, it reverses in.

“The truck driver must get out to initiate the exchange, and he or she swipes their card on a reader external to the grid,” Hollamby continues.

“So, the front gate's closed, the back gate's open. The straddle carrier comes across and using laser-guided technology, locks onto the box and takes it into the stack.

“Nobody touches the box. The first time a Patrick employee touches that container is when the crane driver picks it up to put it on the ship.”

To work, the system relies on a millimetre wave radar emitter which allows for triangulation of the position of the machine off the light towers.

The machines move along a set of virtual nodes, which are embedded in the ground, with each operating straddle carrier, given exclusive occupancy of that chain of nodes, to ensure there are no collisions.

This visual grid of nodes can be altered as needed.

Looking to the future, Hollamby, who has been with the terminal since it opened, says: “Patrick have been at the forefront of stevedoring innovation on the Australian waterfront for many years and see this as an essential source of competitive advantage which will continue to deliver a high safety / high efficiency environment for the benefit of its clients, employees, and the Australian community”.  

“Both key interfaces – ship-side and land-side – have changed remarkably over the last few decades and there is a great deal we can be proud of,” he continues.