Has The Port of Tyneside not already established unloading facilities for North American Biomass with rail access?
However as the new plant at Fishguard is on the coast and N.American biomass is to be used would not the most sensible method be Transhipment with small feeder bulkers from Tyneside or Hunterston?
From Scandinavia I'd expect it to travel by rail the entire way, considering it could (in theory) be done non-stop without ever leaving the rails via the Øresund Bridge and Danish central belt, and in around a decade or so cutting off the corner using the Fehmarnbelt. But yes, Panamax vessels at Fishguard seems unlikely at best - the infrastructure required to support such vessels far exceeds the benefits gained by a single plant.
Sadly the economics of biomass do not readily allow for onward transfer from ship to rail so where it becomes necessary the business case fails. The calorific value by volume of (say) coal is many times that of biomass and the transport costs are a factor of volume as well as weight. The end result is that you cannot afford transshipment en route, hence the current push to site biomass plants in port areas. There will be a growing domestic supply of feedstock over time but as other posters mentioned this would have the same characteristic as wagonload distribution which we know is no longer economic. It is more economic to generate power close to the source of supply rather than ferry the feedstock to some inland site and this consideration will always win out in the end.
The Port of Tyne does handle Biomass which is largely destined for Drax whilst the Port of Liverpool has also started to handle it, serving Drax and Ironbridge. They also have plans to build their own power generation plant at Brocklebank Dock.
I doubt it would be economical to rail from Scandinavia due to economies of scale when using bulk ships, let alone the logistical nightmare of maintaining the regular flow of product from one or more sites to the plant through so many countries, even if they are all in EU.
Moving the quantities of product required to supply a power station is always going to be cheaper in the UK by rail than by road providing there is a single source, ie a port facility as the Tyne and Mersey examples show. Building power plants in or adjacent to ports is not new but we do have several relatively modern power stations, with a growing demand for their output, that were originally built to burn coal and or gas which can have their lives economically extended by converting them to use biomass, so inland moves will likely remain necessary for many years to come.
Transhipping bulk product which usually has a relatively low value per tonne between bulk ships especially around UK ports is never going to be cost effective as the double handling costs would be huge and you still have the problem of moving the product from a suitable berth and storage area to the plant.
