Southampton port director Doug Morrison says: "Southampton had a blow, a knockout, with the Dibden Bay decision. It has taken us a long time to come to terms with it and prepare something else that means Southampton's place in the marine sector remains secure for many years to come.

"Dibden Bay is something that in 20 or 30 or 40 years from now there might be a use for it - who knows? Let's use it as a legacy for the future. If I am living in Hythe Marina, I would be seeing this as a positive because we are not building on Dibden.

"The chances of ABP spending hundreds of millions of pounds on this and then putting in a Dibden part two application are incredibly remote.

"We have moved on a long way since the Dibden Bay was first thought about and the world of container handling has moved on a lot too. We can do a lot more stacking and that's one of the reasons why, without increasing the footprint greatly, we can still increase capacity significantly.

"We are saying ours is one of the most sustainable developments in the country. We don't have to reclaim any land we are just making best use of existing facilities. We are not building a new quay or anything like that.

"We want to see more of the containers going out of Southampton by sea. We are all environmentalists here, everyone and we don't want to see it all going by road. At the moment very little of it goes by sea, it's in single figures in percentages "It is an 85 per cent increase in business so there could be a corresponding increase in the number of jobs. We don't know yet. But it is not just direct employment, it is all the secondary companies, the agents and the hauliers and others. It's jobs for them too.

"There is tremendous excitement about this here.

"People are saying thank God you are doing something, that there's enthusiasm and that we are working to grow the business.

"No business can afford to stand still, to sit back and say we are quite happy as we are, because if you do you'll find yourself going backwards.