As part of an overall plan to create a digital foundation for automation, physical artificial intelligence (AI) and future industrial growth to revitalise an entire economic region, and in doing so construct a platform to meet the realities of live industrial operations, Thames Freeport has announced the completion of a multi-site deployment of a Verizon Business private 5G platform across its economic corridor.
One of the busiest maritime shipping hubs in the UK, Thames Freeport is a designated UK Free Trade Zone established east of the UK’s capital to boost economic growth, create high-value jobs and attract global investment as part of a long-term effort to revive the Thames Estuary region.
Thames Freeport has already helped create more than 1,400 jobs and secured over £2.13bn of private investment since 2021. A further 1,290 people are employed across the tax sites, with 2,548 additional jobs in the confirmed pipeline. Through its long-term growth plan, it aims to attract up to £4.9bn of additional investment, double the region’s trade capacity, and support up to 28,000 jobs by 2045 with what it a strong focus on skills, training and opportunities for local communities.
The Verizon Business private 5G implementation is designed to establish a unified, industrial-grade wireless connectivity foundation for several economically critical port, logistics and manufacturing environments. Nokia Enterprise Campus Edge is the exclusive hardware and software provider for the networks, which incorporate the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) platform and Nokia MX Industrial Edge (MXIE).
By connecting multiple industrial environments on a secure, unified platform, Thames Freeport intends to offer its tenants built-in infrastructure for developing and scaling connected capabilities such as physical AI, computer vision, real-time asset tracking, connected worker/worker safety applications, predictive maintenance, edge computing, AI-powered real-time autonomous operations and operational intelligence, and more, as individual site priorities dictate.
In addition to enabling digital applications and capabilities, the wireless connectivity also facilitates the capture and transport of data, the connectivity of people and machines across physically and technologically complex industrial sites, and the movement of technological insights from controlled trials into daily operations.
Thames Freeport’s Connectivity Innovation Lab has brought technology providers together with its partner sites to test and validate potential use cases for the networks, particularly in the areas of maintenance and efficiency, tracking and monitoring, and health, safety and security. The first trials are in progress or have been completed for the following uses:
- Vehicle damage detection.
- Digital truck processing.
- Mission-critical field communications.
- Digital mapping of container yards.
In the damage detection use case, AI is used to spot damage to vehicles and trailers from images and video, so inspection no longer depends on a slow external process. The trial solution is said to have been able to pick up damage that manual inspections had missed.
The truck processing platform connects terminals, depots and truck drivers, automating communication between gate, yard and operations teams, and providing real-time visibility of truck movements. The trial showed where queues build at gates when an incident slows access.
The network also supports push-to-talk, video, location and emergency alert tools for field staff, tracking field activity, producing daily reports without manual input, and sending real-time alerts to the right teams when an incident occurs.
Work in progress includes creating a digital map of the container yard. This will show full container inventory with location, age and planned movements. It also gives real-time visibility of containers that are moving or planned to move, including export cargo for specific vessels.
A second phase of trials will cover ports and logistics use cases. Users have identified the following areas to investigate for private 5G-driven solutions:
- Simulation and scenario planning with digital twin and simulation tools.
- Proactive estate monitoring.
- AI video analysis.
- Operational decision support using a real-time AI data layer with natural language processing.
- Predictive maintenance and condition monitoring.
- Environmental monitoring.
Geographically, the deployment spans five separate locations across the Thames Freeport district, each a private and independently operating tenant of the hub with distinct use cases for private 5G technology. Each tenant network operates on an independent network core for complete data sovereignty.
Tenants using the platform include DP World London Gateway and DP World Logistics Park, Ford Dagenham, and two locations at the Port of Tilbury.
DP World London Gateway and DP World Logistics Park are said to be the UK’s largest and most integrated deep-sea container port and logistics facility. The private 5G platform at these locations will provide a digital foundation for connected terminal and logistics operations, asset tracking, video analytics, autonomous systems, coordinated workflows and automation readiness.
Ford Dagenham is the largest manufacturing site in London, which has produced more than 11 million vehicles and 50 million engines in its history. The deployment provides a scalable manufacturing connectivity layer for connected assets, robotics, vision-based applications and production intelligence.
The largest of the Thames ports, housing 135 supply chain companies that support all cargo types, the Port of Tilbury serves as a logistics hub for construction, automotive, and food and drink sectors. Private 5G use cases include cargo operations support, connected workers, site monitoring, safety applications, asset visibility, and future automation across live port and logistics environments.
Commenting on the work at Thames Freeport, Robb Juliano, vice-president of 5G acceleration at Verizon Business, described the implementation as a “perfect reference point” for the versatility and scalability of private 5G across complex industrial sites.
“One commercial hub, five individual sites with unique needs, and a multitude of connected use cases,” he said. “Together with Thames Freeport, we’re creating a digital foundation for automation, physical AI and future industrial growth to revitalise an entire economic region. Similar enterprises hosting multiple sites with complex and evolving needs – especially as physical AI redefines industrial operations – can lay the same private 5G foundation from which to build their own transformations.”
