Mozambique starts to dredge another port

The dredging of Mozambique’s Port of Quelimane, 305 kilometres north-east of Beira, is due to begin this month and will last until January 2016.

The current estimate is that, once the work is completed, around 320 000 cubic metres of sediment will have been removed.

At the same time, the Mozambique department of transport released the information that this will be the first dredging project for at least five years, and that post-project the port should have an overall average depth of five metres.

This very small port has good shelter, but is only capable of berthing small ships up to a maximum size of 500 feet (152.4m) in length.

The department also revealed that the Port of Maputo had increased from 9m to 14m deep; while the port of Beira, which is tidal, had reasonable conditions for berthing ships, with an average depth of 8m along its access channel.