MSC was the first to sign a contract with the port for transhipment operations, in 2005, and soon after this CMA-CGM signed a similar contract in 2006 and since then container traffic expansion has been in overdrive. In 2007, the port of Beirut handled 948,000 teu, a huge 59% increase over the 595,000 teu handled in 2006. Alongside burgeoning container transhipment volumes CMA-CGM and MSC as well as other carriers have also been responsible for fast growing local gateway cargo; this rose from 339,174 teu in 2006 to account for 444,165 teu in 2007, a 31% increase.<\/p>\n
Such has been the pace of container traffic growth in Beirut that there have been congestion problems and as a result complaints from port users. There are also reservations in the shipping community that the planned extension of Quay 16, the container quay, by 170m is not enough to cope with perceived short-term demand levels. This work is expected to be completed in two years time providing another 200,000 teu capacity and beyond this there are hopes in some quarters of a further expansion up the Beirut River.<\/p>\n
Moves are also believed to have been made in the expansion planning process to provide CMA-CGM and MSC with their own self-operated terminal areas.<\/p>\n
Quay 16, which became operational in 2005, is now effectively working at full capacity. To provide some relief in the overall container handling situation the port authority recently opened two old quays for container handling although by its own admission they are not ideally suited for this duty. Quay 16 together with the two old quays offers an annual capacity in the order of 1.2m teu\/yr. It is enough for now but only just.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Port of Beirut is actively pursuing an expansion of its container facilities in order to accommodate surging new traffic volumes from CMA-CGM and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), two major container lines that use Beirut as a transhipment hub.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":7473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-7472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472","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=7472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7474,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472\/revisions\/7474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7472"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=7472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}