Port of Ngqura on course for opening next year

BY THIS time next year, the Eastern Cape (and South Africa) will have a new deep-water port – Ngqura, about 20 km by road from the existing Port of Port Elizabeth. The port’s first two container berths will start operating next year, with work already having started on doubling the container capacity by 2011, says Manie Coetzee who is responsible for Transnet National Ports Authority business development for the port. The harbour is being developed by the Transnet National Ports Authority, and operation of the first container terminal will be by Transnet Port Terminals. There is already big demand for Ngqura’s multipurpose terminal, which will have three or more “customers” by the time the port starts commercial operation. Coetzee says the as-yet-unnamed (due to confidentiality clauses) customers will be making use of mobile handling equipment. This means that they do not include the Alcan smelter or exporters of ore, which would need permanent fixed infrastructure. Both these projects and terminal requirements for a proposed oil refinery and chlorine plant remain part of the planning for the expansion of Ngqura, which is the reason that the Transnet National Ports Authority is insisting that the equipment on the first multipurpose terminal be mobile, he says. Long-term plans for the port will see it having 32 berths, stretching all the way up the Coega River to the N2. The container quay is being expanded because, according to Coetzee, local and international studies point to a 10 to 20% growth in container traffic, and the current South African ports do not have the capacity to handle the increase. “There is also a need to move empty containers as well as transhipment cargo. All this eats up capacity,” he says. For that reason, he adds the Port of Port Elizabeth “won’t die”. The two ports will complement each other. For business in Port Elizabeth, this means that they will have a choice of ports.