Net-Zero Express: New Liverpool–Manchester Rail Link Set to Fast-Track Fresh Produce and Carbon Cuts

A proposed high-speed railway linking Liverpool and Manchester is being billed as the linchpin of the North West’s “Northern Arc” growth plan.

Backers say the £17 billion scheme would inject up to £7 billion a year into the UK economy and support more than 40,000 jobs—but its potential impact on the fresh-produce supply chain is only now coming into focus.

A corridor built for cargo as well as commuters

Stretching from a new Liverpool Gateway station to underground platforms beneath Manchester Piccadilly, the line would call at Warrington Bank Quay and Manchester Airport before joining the existing network.

Although designed chiefly for fast passenger services, the project’s business case highlights the release of at least four additional freight train paths in each direction every day, equivalent to removing more than 300,000 HGV journeys a year.

For time-critical, temperature-controlled loads such as salad crops, soft fruit and cut flowers, those paths could prove transformative.

Port of Liverpool: reefer traffic ready to switch

Short-sea operator WEC Lines already runs weekly services carrying Moroccan tomatoes, Spanish citrus and Portuguese stone fruit into the deep-water Liverpool2 terminal, where hundreds of new high-cube reefer containers have just come on stream.

At present most of that produce is trucked down the M62. With spare freight capacity on the Chat Moss line and a direct link into the new high-speed corridor, importers would have the option to load reefers straight onto overnight “fast freight” trains—cutting the port-to-warehouse transit from more than two hours by road in peak traffic to under one hour rail-to-rail.

Warrington: cold-chain hub on the doorstep

The route’s only intermediate stop, Warrington Bank Quay, sits next to the sprawling Omega Business Park, where Iceland Foods last month opened a £100 million, half-million-square-foot chilled and frozen distribution centre.

Add the existing Brakes and Amazon cold stores and Warrington is fast becoming one of Britain’s most densely packed food-logistics clusters. Direct high-speed rail access would allow palletised fresh produce from Liverpool—or indeed from southern growers using Daventry’s rail hub—to roll straight into Omega without touching the motorway network.

Manchester Airport: berries by breakfast

At the eastern end, new platforms beneath Manchester Airport would plug the country’s third-busiest cargo hub directly into the rail grid. The airport already handles around 120,000 tonnes of freight a year and boasts its own chillers and Border Inspection Post.

High-value perishables arriving on late-night wide-bodies—blueberries from South America or Kenyan cut flowers, for instance—could be on supermarket shelves in Leeds or Birmingham before lunchtime the next day, all by rail.

Shelf-life, sustainability and the bottom line

For growers and importers, the lure is threefold:

• Speed – Cutting hours out of the “first mile” lengthens usable shelf-life, reducing waste and markdowns.

• Reliability – Dedicated freight slots avoid the motorway congestion that plagues just-in-time produce flows, particularly on the M62.

• Carbon – A single high-speed freight train can remove up to 80 lorries from the road, helping retailers hit Scope 3 emission targets and easing pressure on driver shortages.

Industry modelling suggests that shifting only a quarter of the Port of Liverpool’s fresh-produce throughput onto rail could save around 18,000 tonnes of CO₂ annually and trim logistics costs by five to seven per cent once scale economies kick in.

Next steps

The Liverpool–Manchester Railway Board, co-chaired by metro mayors Steve Rotheram and Andy Burnham, is due to lodge a detailed business case with ministers before the summer recess. If Whitehall signs off, enabling works could start in the early 2030s, with passenger and freight services following later in the decade.

For Britain’s fresh-produce sector, that timeline cannot come soon enough. As one leading importer put it: “Every extra day of shelf-life is money in the bank—and a greener supply chain to boot. This railway could deliver both.”