Walvis Bay
About 50 percent of construction of the new container terminal at the port of Walvis Bay on 40 hectares of reclaimed land has been completed. This was confirmed by the chief executive officer of Namport, Bisey Uirab, during a media day held last week at Walvis Bay.
Uirab said the N$3 billion port expansion, once completed, will enable Namport to accommodate larger and longer container vessels as well as efficient ship-to-shore cranes.
The container terminal project includes the construction of a modern container terminal, adding 600m of quay length to the existing 1500m and 650 000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) per annum capacity to the existing 350 000 TEUs.
The terminal will have two berths of 600 metres in length, have a -16.0 CD water depth, accommodate container vessels of 8 000 TEUs and handle 750 000 TEUs per annum.
According to Uirab the project is well on track and will be commissioned in early 2018. “Once the new container terminal comes on stream, the current container terminal will be utilized for multi-purpose cargo which will create the opportunity for increased bulk and break bulk business in that larger cargo vessels can be accommodated at the existing container terminal berths.
“The most prolific development in terms of increasing capacity and expanding our port of Walvis Bay footprint is undoubtedly also the SADC gateway development, which is situated further north from the current port area,” Uirab explained.
He added that there is a growing demand for the import and export of bulk commodities in SADC and the port area will be ideally suited for this purpose.
“The 1 330 hectare development will be the key spoke in the Namibia logistics hub and will be a major port gateway serving the ‘shopping mall’ of SADC countries,” he explained.