Earth retaining walls for Port One, Great Blakenham

Catering for the increasing demand for e-commerce warehousing, Port One is a brand new development at Great Blakenham, near Ipswich, providing 90 million cubic feet of storage capacity. Located just off the A14 and a 20 minute drive from the Port of Felixstowe, the units have been purpose built to offer high ridge heights of approximately 20 metres coupled with narrow aisles to maximise the cubic capacity of the facility. The size of the development is huge and will operate 24/7, 365 days a year to satisfy the very specific needs of online shopping.

Due to varying heights of the topography, earth retaining walls were required to cater for differing levels between some of the warehousing units. In addition, boundary walls were needed in places to hold back banks of earth.

Poundfield Precast supplied and installed 150 L-walls ranging in height from 3.5 metres down to one metre. The walls were bolted to a concrete base to anchor the units and resist overturning and sliding. Due to higher than usual loadings, we worked with our engineers and used larger ground fixings for the walls retaining the earth bank.