Work has started on increasing the capacity of the Port of Lüderitz and the transport infrastructure from the Northern Cape to handle up to 2.2 million tons of manganese a year from the current 720 000 a year.This will be achieved through the introduction of a barge-to-ship transfer to offshore post-Panamax-sized vessels, the upgrading of the rail link to South Africa, and investment in more efficient truck trailer combinations.The Namibian Ports Authority (Namport) has awarded the contract for the development and operation of a common-user manganese export terminal (CUMET) in the Port of Lüderitz to Lüderitz Bay Shipping and Forwarding, a Bidvest company. According to the environmental impact assessment, the manganese will be stored in a new, fully enclosed warehouse, to be built on the remaining piece of vacant land on the quayside. Manganese ore will be received by third parties via road and rail from the Northern Cape. The ore will be off loaded directly in the warehouse where it will be stockpiled using front-end loaders and excavators. Barges will berth at the nearby quay wall and ore will be loaded directly into the barges’ hulls, via enclosed conveyors. It was decided to use barges because one of the major limiting factors of the Port of Lüderitz is water depth. Due to hard bedrock, deepening of the port is currently not feasible, according to the EIA. The current water depth at the quay wall is -8.15 mCD and this limits shipments to 30 000 tons per shipment or approximately 650 000 tons per year. The CUMET project has to implement two main aspects to increase the annual shipments through the more efficient loading of vessels berthed in the port, and transhipment to a large post-Panamax or mini-capesize mother vessel.The new warehouse will be able to store 158 000 tons of ore and will cover an area of around 12 000 square metres.Ore will be piled up to around 8.9 metres. There will be four to five bays to handle different grades of ore, and separate entry and exit points for trucks, as well as plans for a rail siding.The barges will initially be loaded with skips, but this will be replaced by a belt loading system capable of handling 750 tons an hour. There are plans to reduce the number of trucks on the road, which is set to increase to 204 a day when the terminal is operating at full capacity.According to the EIA, the introduction of a road traffic management system (RTMS) and purpose-built trucks can reduce this to 141 trucks per day – or triple the volume of ore with twice the present number of trucksThis would be further reduced if the rail capacity was increased. If the export target volume of 2.2m tons is reached, a barge will occupy the berth for 12 days per month, transferring ore to two 92 000-ton post-Panamax vessels a month.
