New Lome terminal sucks up SA transhipment cargo

A new container terminal in the Port of Lomé in Togo looks set to offer a significant boost to sea trade heading into the rapidly burgeoning markets in West Africa. This new facility, Lome Container Terminal (LCT), has been developed by Terminal Investments Limited (TIL) – an affiliate of the MSC line (65%) – and China Merchant Holdings, a group of investors led by Global Infrastructure Partners (35%). According to French shipping consultants, Alphaliner, LCT was awarded a 35-year concession by the government of Togo in 2011 – to develop, construct and operate a greenfield container terminal – with an optional 10-year extension. At the same time, MSC has a terminal service agreement to use LCT for 15 years. The technical specifications for the terminal – planned from 2017 – are an installed annual capacity of 1.4 million container moves (equivalent of 2.2m TEUs); a draught of 15.5 metres; a quay length of 1 050m; an area of 54 hectares; a maximum vessel size of 14 000 TEUs; and 12 ultra-large, ship-to-shore (STS) quay cranes. According to Glenn Delve, marketing director of MSC in SA, the terminal serves as a gateway to the landlocked countries of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso and to the northern areas of Nigeria. Delve added that MSC had consolidated its own Far East-West Africa volumes in this single West African hub at Lome, and added the port to its Africa Express service last October. This hub is supported by a comprehensive network of local feeders to serve the other West African ports. The move for the Africa Express service to now hub at Lome means that MSC’s previous West African hubs in SA will lose out on what Delve calculates as about 100 000 transhipment TEUs a year. He also confirmed that the line had just extended the Africa Express weekly service beyond its previous limit of Shanghai and would now turn at Tianjin instead. With the tie-up with this new facility, MSC has become the first carrier to implement a single-hub solution in West Africa, according to Alphaliner. But, said Delve, the LCT is an open terminal and other lines are likely to use it for their own solutions. INSERT & CAPTION The LCT is a development terminal on the Gulf of Guinea ideally positioned to serve as a transhipment hub for the West African coast. – Glenn Delve