PORT DEVELOPMENT
year, was a milestone for MIT, says Jose Iribarren port manager. ‘It is the first time in MIT history.’ The terminal had previously reached the million teu in August 2010 and in years before, more often in September or October. ‘At the
ew customers resuming calls Colon Container Terminal (CCT) and an increase in cargo coming from Asia have boosted transhipment activity at the Evergreen terminal, located on the Atlantic side, at the entrance of the Panama Canal.
N
In August 2010, COSCO returned to the terminal calling with weekly service AWE2, and bringing COSCO feeders to the Caribbean region with two vessels per week.
The results have been excellent and the terminal saw a resurgence of activity in 2010 that continued in 2011. The crisis seemed to be forgotten as CCT throughput grew by 16.1% to 519,75teu while the first half of 2011 showed positive figures with throughput growing by 8.3% to
pace we are going, we might have a record year,’ he explains. Cargo volume increased by 18.2% during first half of 2011, followed by a robust month of July with 178,000teu [104,108 moves], up 27% compared to July 2010. August is
Colon Container Terminal (CCT)
143,851teu compared to 132,851teu during the same period the year before. The terminal currently has a total area of 37ha, and access channel of 15mtr draught, turning basin of 600mtr in radius and 982mtr of container berth with pier 1, 2 and 3. Both pier 1 and 2 have a draught of 14mtr and the newest pier 3, a depth of 15mtr. The terminal has 984 reefer plugs, five Mitsubishi Post- Panamax cranes, five Mitsubishi Panamax Cranes, in addition to 12 Mitsui RTGs, 18 units of ZPMC RTGS, nine Side Loader, five Reach Stackers, 12 Forklifts, 97 trucks and 89 Chassis, to service the piers. An adjacent rail Intermodal connection, which is served by Panama Canal Railway Company permits transhipment on the Pacific side. CCT has also a maintenance and repair shop,
which provides services to customers of repair works to both dry and reefer containers 24/7.
Taking advantage of the worldwide economic slow down in 2009, CCT has begun the $200m Stage One of phase III of its expansion programme. This involves dredging to 15.5mtr for the construction of berth number four – continuous to pier 3 for the future Post-Panamax vessels and the landfill of 18.5ha for another container yard, and expecting to complete all expansion construction in 2014, then the terminal will have a total area of 74ha. This new expansion phase will increase the terminal capacity by 500,000teu, to 2m teu up from the present capacity of 1.5m teu, says CCT president Lin Che-Sheng, who became president in October 2009.
looking like another month of over 100,000 moves and we have never had back-to-back months with these kind of volumes,’ says Iribarren.
Panama is living its best moment with a booming economy, likely to reach 8.5%
PANAMA MARITIME REVIEW 2011/12
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