Expansion comes as company swaps ‘Intermodal’ with ‘Rail’ and rolls out new livery
Business evolution has spurred a three pronged adjustment of Bowmans Intermodal to more accurately reflect its present and future direction.
The South Australian logistics and freight company has been renamed Bowmans Rail, introduced a new livery and website, and is expanding its rail services into NSW from its home base at Bowmans, 100km north of Adelaide.
“We started off as a purely intermodal company, operating SA’s largest regional intermodal site and one of the largest of its kind in the country,” CEO Scott McKay says.
“While that is still a core part of our business, our primary focus is as a rail operator, providing regional rail freight services for containerised commodities such as agriculture and mining products.
“We have a dynamic, high-growth business plan based on site expansion, providing more services to customers and expanding interstate.
“This builds on our growth over the past three years and we’re now a major employer in the region with more than 30 people working for us.
“We are ideally located to service the proposed expansion of the Northern Adelaide Food Bowl and the cyclical resurgence of the mining industry.
“The Asian export market will become increasingly important to our customers and our business development plan also includes close monitoring and evaluation of other world markets including India.”
The company draws on the strengths of its three shareholders – Toll Group, Balco, and AGT Foods – and is looking for opportunities further afield.
“Bowmans Rail has until recently been a niche rail operator largely servicing the needs of its owners,” chairman Shaun Mooney says.
“We are looking at expansion opportunities that are customer led.
“At Bowmans Rail we provide solutions rather than just a train service, which is why, despite the general over supply of rail capacity in Australia at present, we are fielding so many queries in relation to new opportunities at present.”
Bowmans Rail was established in 2003 by the hay and grain export businesses at Bowmans whose founders included current director Malcolm May.
Expansion has seen the intermodal site grow to a 40,000 square metre hard stand area that can manage trains up to 1,200m and road trains up to 36.5m.
The intermodal terminal handles 30,000 full 20-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containerised products, primarily processed mining products, hay, grain and specialty pulses.
Separately, the business also transfers 20,000 containers of processed minerals annually.
Bowmans Rail operate more than 500 train service annually, and transports over 36,000 containers, which equates to over 1.1 million tonnes of containerised freight per year.
“Agriculture and mining are major components of our current business but we will continue to expand by adding value along the supply chain with our rail equipment and container supplier partners, providing great value based on our integrated approach to full servicing,” McKay says.
“These developmental projects include containers which can be filled in paddock or at mine sites and transferred directly to the processors or market.
“We operate short-haul rail services between Bowmans, the mining centre of Broken Hill and the processing hub of Port Pirie, connecting to the inner and outer terminals at Port Adelaide, with connections available to the Port of Melbourne.