Posted on January 8, 2018
The port of Beira, in the province of Sofala, Mozambique this year plans to adopt an electronic cargo management system allowing users to register their entries at the terminal in advance, via the Internet, which should improve port efficiency, said the managing director of Cornelder de Moçambique, the port’s management company.
Jan de Vries also told Mozambican newspaper Notícias that a significant increase in container processing capacity is expected from the current 200,000 to 700,000 per year following an investment of around US$6.2 million.
Cornelder de Moçambique, a partnership between the Cornelder Group from the Netherlands and state-owned port and railway company CFM, also intends to introduce new systems for automatic identification and registration of trucks and containers entering the terminal.
With a daily movement of approximately 700 trucks, the port of Beira has an area reserved for 400,000 containers per year, and the company is challenged to increase the productivity, capacity and safety of operations to accommodate the demand of traditional users such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and DR Congo.
The Port of Beira Container Terminal was built in 1992, with a processing capacity of 100,000 containers per year, but 25 years later it processes more than 200,000 containers a year, “a fact that confirms that Mozambique actually needs this type of facility.”
Emergency dredging of the port access channel by Dutch company Van Oord in a 65 million-euro operation will allow vessels with a 60,000 gross tonnage, commonly called Panamax, to dock at the port once again from April onwards.
The conclusion in April of repair and expansion works on the EN6 road between the port of Beira and the Machipanda border with neighbouring Zimbabwe, over a total length of 288 kilometres, will allow an increasing amount of cargo to be shipped through the port.
Source: AAPA
