The new Walvis Bay container terminal has handled its first vessel, the RDO Favour, which docked alongside berth 11 on August 24. The Liberia-flagged box ship, first flagged under Malta as a newbuild in 2012, stopped at Namibia’s new revamped port on its way east. The Favour is 256 metres long and 37 metres wide. It has a draught of 10.4 metres and has a top-speed capacity of 24.3 knots (about 45 kilometres per hour). By last Friday vessel-tracking technology located the Favour in the South China Sea. The new container terminal will have a capacity of at least 750 000 twentyfoot equivalent units (TEUs) a year. Namport closed the port from August 17 to August 23 to complete the transfer of equipment and export containers. This included the moving of six rubber-tyre gantries, three mobile harbour cranes and 1 200 containers.
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