Heavy investment in equipment at Kenya’s main artery of Mombasa has paid off, and future growth prospects are looking rosy indeed.<\/p>\n
With a growth of nearly 10%,the port handled 479,835 teu in 2006, which senior public relations officer Bernard Osero notes is a function of both increased efficiency on the waterfront and growth in the regional economy.<\/p>\n
At Mombasa Container Terminal (MCT), which accounts for 50% of total box traffic, around $40m has been spent on acquiring 18 modern cranes, including four quayside gantry cranes, two rail-mounted gantries and 12 rubber-tyred gantries (RTGs).Extra cash has also been spent on auxiliary yard handling equipment.All of this has helped productivity, which has seen ship turnaround times slashed from four days three years ago to around one and a half days today.<\/p>\n
During the current financial year, Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) will allocate $11m towards buying two further quayside cranes for MCT, while 12 new fork lift trucks are earmarked for conventional cargo handling operations. During 2007-08, additional RTGs are slated for acquisition. Mr Osero reports that KPA has also revamped IT services at the port. An enterprise resource planning system went live in 2002, followed by the introduction of EDI and the implementation of a gate pass module, which has streamlined both vehicle flow and cargo security control.<\/p>\n
“For 2007, we are forecasting further throughput growth of about 6%, as additional efficiency gains are realised from the introduction of new equipment.We have already boosted moves-per-crane-hour from 9 to 20, although are expecting this to continue going upwards,” says Mr Osero.”This will be the result of the introduction by September 2007 of an IT waterfront programme encompassing ship and yard planning, as well as traffic, warehousing and general information management.”<\/p>\n
The railway serving the port has also recently been privatised, generating real hope of an upward boost in cargo over the next five months. A more efficient feed from inland terminals should help reduce on dock congestion, thereby attracting more business from rivals.<\/p>\n
Capacity has been ramped up to accommodate this potential extra traffic. From an initial base of 250,000 teu\/year, based on three-high stacking, KPA has increased ground slots from 2,803 to 4,133 and will go to five-high stacks with the arrival of the new RTGs.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Osero reveals that the real big leap forward will come in September 2007, which is when work is scheduled to start on a second container terminal, funded by Japan. To be developed in phases, it will have a 1.2m teu capacity by 2013.The first phase will cost $164m, while the whole project will require investment of $220m.<\/p>\n
Besides fast tracking this project, KPA is also stressing the need to dredge the Kilindini channel and container berths from 13.5m to 15.5m to accommodate larger vessels. Tendering for the consultancy has already started, with work scheduled to begin at the end of the year. “The aim is to convert Mombasa from a feeder port to a regional hub capable of accommodating 5,000 teu vessels,”says Mr Osero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With traffic across East Africa and the Indian Ocean continuing to grow,Mombasa is taking its future role seriously, as Alex Hughes finds out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1133,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions\/1133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}