West African breakthrough for Kalmar
Kalmar cranes are moving into African ports
An order from the French Bollore group means Cargotec’s cranes are now starting to move into the emerging African ports market, through Bollore’s wholly-owned Unicaf subsidiary.
The contract is for a total of four Kalmar ship-to-shore units, with an option for four more to follow: the first phase of which will be delivered in the third quarter of 2012 to various ports in West Africa. The new cranes will be used to provide specialised capacity in ports where handling is currently carried out primarily by mobile cranes or ship's own gear, as well as on green field terminals. The parties have agreed that the monetary value will not be disclosed.
The Bollore contract is important as the French group is one of the biggest container terminal operators in the whole of Africa as well as being the West African leader.
Ismo Matinlauri of Cargotec’s Port Cranes division told Port Strategy, that the company sees “economic activities in Africa in general developing positively”, with a special emphasis on South-Africa and Maghreb (French speaking Africa). He added that the Middle-East and Dubai links which support East Africa are also “areas where we see increased activity in port operations”.
Bollore currently has a network of 13 container terminals in the country and the group is looking to develop both the existing and new terminals during the next few years, allowing them to meet the needs of these fast-growing emerging economies, including landlocked countries such as Burkina Faso and Mali.
It seems that one important issue for Bollore is a fast delivery. Mr Matinlauri noted that the contract was secured after the crane company both demonstrated the quality of the equipment, "and that the capability was available to meet a relatively short lead time to delivery”.
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