The New South Wales government will invest more than $5 Billion on safer, faster, more efficient, and sustainable freight movement to grow the state economy.

The NSW Freight and Ports Plan 2018-2023 seeks to manage growth and ease congestion on roads and railroad lines to boost the growing freight business, which reaches more than three million NSW homes and businesses every day.

"The amount of freight moved through NSW is set to grow by 28 percent to more than 618 million tonnes by 2036," said Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight Melinda Pavey, as quoted by Logistics and Materials Handling magazine.  "To support this, the NSW Freight and Ports Plan 2018-2023 provides more than 70 initiatives for increasing capacity on the existing network, including building new infrastructure," said Ms. Pavey.

"From big businesses to farmers, retailers to consumers - we all rely on our goods getting to us in a safe and efficient manner.  For this reason the NSW Government has set firm targets to achieve faster, more efficient and higher capacity networks to remain competitive, support jobs and deliver economic growth across NSW," she continued.  "With freight and logistics contributing more than $180 million to the NSW economy every day, an increasing population and consumer preferences changing, the freight network will face increased future demand.

"This, compounded by a desire to have same day delivery for online goods, requires government and industry to have the freight network capable of working at full throttle.

“The NSW Freight and Ports Plan 2018-2023 highlights the government and industry plans for road, rail, air, shipping and pipelines and builds on investment from the 2013 NSW Freight and Ports Strategy," Pavey said.