Port of Melbourne Corporation (PoMC) will soon conclude a budgeted A$969m (US$768m) project to deepen its Port Phillip Bay shipping channels and instantly resolve draught issues potentially affecting 60% of its current containership callers.<\/p>\n
Begun in February last year, the 20-month project will create a 14-metre draught at what is already Australia’s largest container and general cargo port, explains PoMC head of corporate relations Peter Harry.<\/p>\n
“The channel deepening project will remedy the current and future draught constraint – presently limited to 11.6 metres at all tides – and bring great benefits to Victorians through the efficient movement of trade which is vital to supporting our export industry, manufacturers and agricultural producers,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Victoria’s largest and most complex marine infrastructure development is well advanced with over 80% of the dredged volume completed. We are on target to complete all major dredging works in the Bay by August 31. Other works involving navigation aids, dock and services protection works and minor dredging around the Yarra River remain on schedule for completion by December 31.”<\/p>\n
During the 2008 calendar year, the PoMC received over 3,500 commercial shipping calls from over 40 shipping lines and handled about 36% of Australia’s container trade. That 2.3m teu throughput – representing about 70% of its overall business – places the port in the world’s top-50 container ports.<\/p>\n
Having embraced containerisation in its infancy 40 years ago, Mr Harry describes the port as being at the hub of a logistics network extending across south-eastern Australia and says it is “arguably Australia’s most important supply chain interface”.<\/p>\n
“PoMC owns and manages around 510 hectares of port land, including 34 commercial berths at five docks and at river wharves, with a total length of nearly seven kilometres.<\/p>\n
“Two modern, purpose-built international container terminals at Swanson Dock are the centrepiece for Australia’s international container trade and a number of multi-purpose terminals handle cargo including timber, paper, iron and steel.<\/p>\n
“Patrick, part of the Australian publicly-listed company Asciano, operates berths 1-4 at the Swanson Dock East terminal, with a total land area of 40 hectares. DP World operates berths 1-4 at the Swanson Dock West terminal, with a land area of around 30 hectares.<\/p>\n
“The port also provides specialised berths for motor vehicles and dry cargo, including cement, sugar, grain and gypsum, as well as berths for handling bulk liquids from petrochemicals to crude oil and molasses.<\/p>\n
“The Station Pier facilities cater for both international and domestic passenger trades and visiting navy vessels.”<\/p>\n
Asked for the key strengths of the port, which generated an operating after-tax profit of A$43.3m (US$35m) in the 2008\/09 financial year, Mr Harry says one is the efficient movement of trade to and from the port gate facilitated by “excellent road and rail links”.<\/p>\n
“PoMC also has an ambitious port development programme which is backed up by a strong commitment to ongoing infrastructure investment.<\/p>\n
“Excluding channel deepening, PoMC has invested around A$250m (US$202m) in port infrastructure since its inception less than six years ago. We believe this is a strong platform for providing added value for our customers and service providers.”<\/p>\n
After consecutive record throughputs of over 200,000 teu during the months of August, September and October last year, PoMC’s trade began to slow in December in containers and “dramatically” in motor vehicles, says Mr Harry.<\/p>\n
“Overall, trade appears to be more resilient than the downturns experienced by other international ports, particularly the US West Coast. At this point, we continue to monitor trade very closely.”<\/p>\n
As completion of the channel deepening project approaches, PoMC is now turning attention to landside infrastructure, says Mr Harry.<\/p>\n
“PoMC is undertaking preparatory design work and is sounding out the market’s appetite for increased container capacity at Webb Dock with a view to developing an international container facility to complement the main terminal at Swanson Dock.<\/p>\n
“This is particularly important given our forecast trade volumes which indicate a quadrupling of teu throughput \u2026 to around 8m teu by 2035.<\/p>\n
“As the strategic managers of the interface of land and sea, PoMC adopts a whole-of-port approach to infrastructure development which means we are increasingly focused on the port operating as a system working to achieve greater freight efficiency.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As guardian of the land\/sea interface, Melbourne takes its role in maritime trade seriously. Iain MacIntyre reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6890,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-6889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6889","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=6889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6889"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=6889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}