Environmental activists are due to protest against the Dibden Bay Terminal development plans at Associated British Ports' annual meeting in London.

ABP, the Southampton Docks' operator, is planning to build a world-class container port on reclaimed land along the shore of Southampton Water at Dibden Bay.

The project has sparked a major public inquiry and some of the objectors, who have bought shares in ABP, will be demonstrating at the meeting.

They include Friends of the Earth director Charles Secrett, who claimed: "This is yet another case of a private company putting profit before people and wildlife.

"The need for a new port at Dibden Bay is not proven and investors would do well to put their money in safer, less controversial projects."

There was There was also a warning from Julie Astin of New Forest Friends of the Earth that the "terrible destruction of these important wildlife sites will be irreversible".

Ironically, their protests in London will be made just over an hour after the Dibden Bay public inquiry resumes in Southampton when the issue will be nature conservation.

A spokesman for ABP said: "It is widely accepted that the UK will need significant container-handling capacity to accommodate the predicted growth in this trade.

"In the case of Southampton, such is the demand from users that space for new port development is a

scarcity, and it is therefore vitally important that we are allowed to develop Dibden Terminal on reclaimed land which was acquired in 1967 by ABP's predecessor, the government-owned British Transport Docks Board, specifically for future port development purposes.

"We have spent four years researching the environment, the ecology of the land and the water in and around the proposed site. It has been subjected to the most detailed environmental scrutiny of any area of the estuary in its entire history.

"It is right and proper that any questions or concerns regarding this proposed development be represented, and the public inquiry is the best forum for the consideration and debate of these issues."