The port of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands is Spain’s third most important container transhipment hub behind Algeciras and Valencia. In 2005, boxes rotated in and out by sea grew by 10.6% to 683,571TEU, compared with growth of 4.09% at Algeciras, 14.24% at Valencia and 22.23% at Barcelona. Overall throughput was up 8.4% to 1,317,340TEU.<\/p>\n
According to the port authority’s press spokesperson, Manuel Vidal, today around 56% of total traffic handled at Las Palmas is transhipment. Since 2000, when MSC established its own regional transhipment operation in the port, overall container traffic has risen by 111%, he notes.<\/p>\n
In fact, MSC’s commitment to Las Palmas is such that it has taken an equity stake in terminal operator OPCSA, which is also partly owned by the powerful Spanish Dragados-SPL group.<\/p>\n
“Las Palmas was the first port in the Canary Islands to fully commit to this type of container traffic. As part of the 2000-2010 infrastructure development plan, the port authority is making a multi million euro investment in expanding the original area occupied by OPCSA to enable it to absorb additional deep-sea transhipment traffic. This will require construction of the Reina Sofia mole to protect the new area, which is being in-filled from the sea, to enable OPCSA to work all year round irrespective of the prevailing weather conditions, ” explains Vidal, adding that once completed there will be sufficient capacity at the terminal for the next 15 years.<\/p>\n
OPCSA handled 800,000TEU last year, up 5.26%. Its initial 125,000 sq m of existing surface area is being doubled in size. An initial expansion of 80,000 sq m encompassing 320m of new quay is already operational, including the deployment of two new super postPanamax quayside gantry cranes. A second phase expansion, which will include a further 80,000 sq m of surface area and 340m of quay, is currently under study. This would bring to 250,000 sq m the total area and 1,100m the length of the quay.<\/p>\n
In addition, La Luz Container Terminal, which currently has 67,000 sq m of operating area and 500m of quay, with an alongside draught of 12.5m, is being expanded through the addition of a further 60,000 sq m of in-filled area, where the draught, at 14m, will be sufficient to enable the terminal to compete for transhipment traffic too.<\/p>\n
“Just by having the right infrastructure does not mean that new business will necessarily be attracted here. The markets themselves have to be sufficiently interesting before shipping lines will start serving them, ” observes Vidal.<\/p>\n
MSC’s success has come on the back of increased trade between Europe, West Africa, South Africa and Latin America, with the Canary Islands designated by the EU as West Africa’s natural gateway to Community markets. However, as Vidal explains, while much scope still exists to attract more transhipment traffic from other operators in addition to MSC on routes linking Europe with Latin America, the West Africa market, while growing in importance, is still not a major international big hitter in terms of overall box numbers.<\/p>\n
One major problem faced by shipping lines using Las Palmas has been the refusal by the port workers’ company, Sestiba, to spread holidays throughout the year rather than taking all of them during the traditional summer period, when 33% of the work force can be absent.<\/p>\n
This has entailed a fall in productivity, dropping from 150 to 90-100 containers\/crane shift at certain times. As a result, MSC has been forced to switch up to 80,000TEU in traffic to other ports. However, the workforce has come to a provisional agreement to make changes, which MSC could reward by boosting its own traffic at OPCSA by up to 20% this year.<\/p>\n
TENERIFE TACKS While Las Palmas handled in excess of a million containers last year, main rival, the port of Santa Cruz on the neighbouring island of Tenerife, reported throughput of just 457,551TEU, albeit a rise of 5.91%. The major difference between the two, however, is not so much in the overall figure, but in the total of transhipped boxes. In Las Palmas, this represents more than half the business, while in Santa Cruz, despite transhipment growth of 23.98%, just 31,455TEU went in and out by sea.<\/p>\n
According to the port authority’s press spokesperson, Jose Marrero, MSC did use to tranship boxes at Capsa, the port of Santa Cruz’s public container terminal. However, space constraints and draught restrictions resulted in this traffic being lost to OPCSA.<\/p>\n
While some other transhipment is still handled, this is mostly rotated out to smaller islands in the archipelago, rather than being major international flows of containers.<\/p>\n
“Our problem at Santa Cruz is one of space. The port is hemmed in by mountains on one side, while the seabed falls away so rapidly that infilling offshore areas to gain more land that way is prohibitively expensive, ” explains Marrero.<\/p>\n
La Candelaria, the dedicated box handling facility run by short sea operator Contenemar in the port cannot be expanded further, since it lies at the very heart of the city and is currently restricted by an 11m draught. In contrast, possibilities do exist to infill the bay in the eastern dock (Darsena del Este) and thereby unite the Muelle del Bufadero and Dique del Este operating sites of Cepsa, whose current capacity is limited to 600,000TEU.<\/p>\n
This new area will increase capacity at the dock to 800,000TEU and also deepen the existing draught to 14m-16m. A construction contract was awarded in January 2005 for the first phase development, which has a price tag of for completion within 15 months. It will add a further 69,000 sq m of surface area, which should be sufficient for Santa Cruz to compete for significant volumes of transhipment traffic.<\/p>\n
However, even this upgrading of the eastern dock is viewed as a short-term fix to the much more complicated problem of finding more space. Therefore, the port authority is backing a further project, which is to build an entirely new deep-sea port at Granadilla, towards the south of the island. By investing ?136m, a framed outer mole 2512m long can be built, allowing various terminals to be built on what will be an 800,000 sq m site. This will include a container terminal, which will have a 650m long quay and alongside draught of 16m.<\/p>\n
“All traffic projections suggest we are going to need an expansion area somewhere on Tenerife and Granadilla would be ideal because of the available space to be found there, ” notes Marrero, adding that the scheme is supported by Spain’s Development Ministry, but needs significant funding from the EU before it can be implemented.<\/p>\n
While a tender has been issued covering construction of the new port, the EU has been lobbied hard by Tenerife’s minority political party, which opposes Granadilla on environmental grounds, whilst favouring an alterative scheme within Santa Cruz itself, despite the fact that this would cost at least twice as much. However, before deciding on which of the two schemes to support, the EU has commissioned yet another environmental impact study upon whose outcome depends the Commission’s entire funding programme. “This project is the most studied in Spain and possibly even the most studied in Europe!” observes Marrero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The race is on in the Canary Islands to secure new container transhipment volumes. Alex Hughes reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6645"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}