In what's being hailed as one of the biggest trade coups Southampton has seen in years. One of the city's largest employers Southampton Container Terminals (SCT) has wrested a key contract from the rival deep-sea container port of Thamesport.

The company clinched the high-profile deal after six months of negotiations with the mighty and influential Grand Alliance, a global trade player made up of various powerful shipping lines.

Members include Hapag-Lloyd Container Line (HLCL), MISC Berhad (MISC), Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) and Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL).

In broad terms the SCT win means processing an extra 150,000 containers, creating new jobs for dockers and engineers and triggering a £15m investment in dockside facilities to handle the fresh workload.

The company, which directly employs 550 staff and a further 200 sub-contractors, currently deals with 820,000 containers a year.

It is understood that more than a quarter of the new earmarked containers will be moved from here by rail around the UK.

The remainder will either go by road or by feeder vessels to small UK ports.

In total SCT is on course to handle 970,000 containers from next year, underlining its position as the second largest container port in the UK after Thamesport stablemate Felixstowe.

According to the SCT, the Grand Alliance contract, which involves six weekly services to Southampton from September, has increased the company's business by nearly 20 per cent in one fell swoop.

The new services link Southampton to Canada, USA East and West Coast, Mexico, South America and the Mediterranean.

SCT plans to invest around £15m in two new quayside gantry cranes and eight new straddle carriers on the back of the contract.

The company's managing director, Patrick Walters, pictured, said: "This is a huge coup for Southampton, and we expect to increase in jobs with more dockers and more engineers."

He added: "Everyone involved in the operation at SCT has worked hard in the past 18 months to improve the terminal's efficiency levels and the hard work is beginning to pay off for us."

SCT is a joint venture between P&O Ports owned by DP World (51 per cent share), which earlier this year acquired now-defunct P&O, and Associated British Ports (49 per cent share).