TEESPORT owner PD Ports is to be sold to a consortium of investors for £246m, it revealed yesterday.

Middlesbrough-based PD confirmed it had accepted an offer from a new company called Endeavour Ports, which was set up by the investors for the acquisition.

The group, whose PD Teesport site is Britain's second-largest port by volume, is being bought by an alliance of private equity group 3i and Australian financial services firms Challenger and Industry Funds Management.

Endeavour Ports, which will take PD Ports private, has pledged to invest in the company's core operations and focus on retaining and developing existing contracts with customers.

It is also believed to favour continuing PD Ports' campaign to bring 7,000 jobs to the region through a £300m deep-water container terminal on the Tees.

PD group development director Martyn Pellew said plans would continue for the scheme, which is being backed by The Northern Echo through its Support Our Port campaign, and said it was business as usual at the port.

Graeme Bevans, a director of Endeavour, said: "We are committed long-term investors and we fully appreciate PD Ports' commercial importance to the North-East of England."

Anthony Platts, of Tees Valley stockbrokers Wise Speke, said Endeavour was likely to be investing in PD Ports because it believed it to be undervalued, and that the venture capitalists could see more potential in the business.

PD mirrors earlier investments in UK infrastructure by Challenger in that it provides "stable cash flows and attractive growth opportunities", he said.

Challenger owns stakes in firms ranging from the North of England Gas Distribution Network, Wales & West Utilities and gas transportation firm Inexus to Arqiva - formerly the broadcast division of cable group ntl.

Endeavour admitted that another attraction of the deal was PD's stock of land and property, listing efforts to unlock value from this portfolio among three strategic priorities.

As well as PD Teesport at Tees and Hartlepool, PD Ports runs a port services arm with operations in warehousing, distribution and freight forwarding from several UK locations.

There is also PD Truck & Van, a Mercedes-Benz commercial vehicles dealer operating as H&L Garages in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

The company floated on the stock market in July last year after Japanese group Nikko sold the business that it had acquired as part of a takeover of Powell Duffryn in 2000.

PD chairman David Harding said: "We are satisfied that the new owners are serious, long-term investors in a ports business such as PD Ports."

Yesterday's offer, which includes the right to receive an interim dividend of 1.5p, is 42 per cent higher than the share price of PD when it floated last year and 26 per cent above the level when news of a potential takeover offer first broke.