AMERICAS • COLOMBIA Port of Cartagena
Cartagena terminals forecast growth
With an investment of more than $750m in recent years, the port complex of Cartagena has been busy preparing for the arrival of bigger ships.
The move seems to be paying off, with Cartagena expected to buck the disappointing trend of most Latin American ports [except in Mexico and Chile] and register a modest increase of around 3% in container throughput for 2016 to 2.68m teu, out of a national total of around 4m teu.
New facilities such as the recently inaugurated SPIA-Aguadulce terminal in Buenaventura (see previous article) and the projected expansion of Cartagena Container Terminal Operations (CCTO) now that APM Terminals has become a large stakeholder, are steadily increase the area’s capacity for more Neopanamax calls. Also In the pipeline is construction of a $580m multipurpose port in the gulf of Uraba some 200km south west of Cartagena, principally for banana exports.
CCTO md is Enrique Piqueras, who was brought in last year from APMT Callao in Peru to run the terminal after APMT had formed a 51:49 jv with the terminal’s landlord Compas in January.
‘Our goal is to optimise existing capacity,’ says Piqueras. ‘We received the permits to modernise the terminal and will invest $212m of which $82m will be spent on infrastructure and superstructure. Construction will begin in August, increasing capacity to 600,000teu in the first phase by 2018 and to 760,000teu if needed.’
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‘If oil prices pick up there will be more imports and general cargo,’ adds Piqueras, who forecasts 80,000 moves and around 600,000-700,000 tonnes of general cargo for 2017.
Meanwhile, total 2016 volumes for Cartagena Bay – which includes Contecar served by shipping lines such as Hamburg Süd and Hapag-Lloyd, CCTO and largest terminal Sociedad Portuaria Cartagena (SPRC) – were around 2.5m teu, of which 700,000teu were domestic cargo, says commercial director Giovanni Benedetti.
Last July, the 8,800teu MSC Brunella became the first Neopanamax to call Cartagena, following the inauguration of the expanded Panama Canal, and the largest vessel ever to dock in a Colombian port.
Building on that experience Port of Cartagena will receive six new Super- Post-Panamax cranes this year, and is using a high technology solution in the form of a cognitive platform to combine real-time and historical views of operations in order to forecast equipment failures and advise on predictive maintenance.
The terminals of Cartagena and Contecar each achieved a milestone on January 24 with the handling of three Neopanamaxes in one day –
Hapag-Lloyd’s 10,500teu Valparaiso Express, the 9,000teu MSC Sofia Celeste and 10,000teu CMA CGM Niagara – together totalling 4,330 movements of containerised cargo.
The achievement served to ‘confirm confidence in the capacity and efficiency of [the Cartagena] logistics platform,’ the port said at the time, and justified the decision by these leading lines to schedule as many as 15 weekly Neopanamax calls at the Colombian port, underlining the potential of SPRC and Contecar as ‘the most important hub of Latin America and the Caribbean.’
Contecar’s ro-ro terminal also saw a massive 48% rise in rolling cargo last year as a result of growing traffic of vehicles from Asia to the Caribbean.’
This year Cartagena predicts further growth of 8% to 12%, according to Benedetti, thanks to new services from The Alliance and Eurosal for which Colombia is a source of domestic cargo.
‘What we see worldwide is a tendency to a reduction of transhipment,’ he explains, whereas most of Colombia’s moves are for imports and exports.
Enrique Piqueras Giovanni Benedetti
However, there is some uncertainty over future trade patterns since AMP is in the process of absorbing Hamburg Süd, the world’s second largest reefer line which has its regional homeport in Cartagena. Some 90% of all Latin American trade is handled by Maersk, Hamburg Süd, Hapag-Lloyd, MSC and CMA CGM, meaning deployment decisions by these lines have huge potential ramifications for the region’s port industry.
Seatrade Maritime Review • Quarterly Issue 2 • June 2017
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