Across the Australian ports scene as a whole, strong demand for Australia’s great storehouse of raw materials and agricultural commodities has ensured the momentum of development in the port sector has barely stuttered during the financial crisis.<\/p>\n
In the main container ports, Brisbane continues work on its Fisherman Islands Berths 11 and 12, which will be operated by Hutchison Port Holdings when completed in 2012 and 2014. Sydney Ports Corporation has awarded the prized stevedoring tender for its A$1bn (US$922m) Port Botany expansion, due for inauguration in 2012, to Hutchison Port Holdings<\/strike>.<\/p>\n
Melbourne completed its epic channel deepening project at the end of November, taking available draught from 11.6 to 14 metres – and none too soon, with third quarter 2009 figures showing 54% of containerships using the port were unable to do so fully-laden. The Port of Melbourne Corporation is now moving to test the market for a third international container terminal and has established a standalone management unit to pursue the project.<\/p>\n
At Port Adelaide, the new joint venture between port leaseholder Flinders Ports and terminal operator DP World seems to be bearing early fruit. Innovative agreements have been reached with two mining companies that will see iron ore railed several hundred kilometres from central South Australia in purpose-built ISO containers. These will be stockpiled adjacent to the recently-expanded Adelaide International Container Terminal and then discharged into panamax-class bulk carriers using roto-tipper devices attached to the existing container cranes.<\/p>\n
In Fremantle, work is getting underway to deepen the Inner Harbour and approach channels, with Royal Boskalis Westminster (which also undertook the Melbourne work) winning the contract.<\/p>\n
In the bulk ports sector, activity is even more frenzied. Newcastle’s Port Waratah Coal Services and Hay Point’s Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal have each just completed major expansion phases and are already contemplating more, driven by customer demand. The Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group will have that port’s third terminal in operation in the first half of 2010.<\/p>\n
In Queensland, the state government has decided to sell 99-year leases of the Port of Brisbane and the Abbot Point Coal Terminal in order to address budgetary problems, but is proceeding nevertheless with a major expansion of the latter to double its capacity. This will be followed by the development of a multi-trade port at Abbot Point, with both serving the mineral-rich Bowen Basin of central Queensland.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Anglo-Swiss giant Xstrata is pressing ahead with plans for its own coal port at Balaclava Island near Port Alma, and the Queensland Government has approved the construction of the Wiggins Island Coal Terminal at Gladstone after 18 coal producers effectively underwrote the cost with take-or-pay contracts.<\/p>\n
In Western Australia, the iron ore industry’s seemingly-endless expansion has been overshadowed by a series of approvals for massive expansion of the liquefied natural gas sector. The Chevron-led Gorgon project will see a new port on Barrow Island while another of the US company’s developments, Wheatstone, will require a new port at Ashburton North, near Onslow. The WA Government has chosen a site at James Price Point on the Kimberley coast as the site of a new LNG processing hub and terminal for Woodside Energy’s huge Browse Basin investment.<\/p>\n
As the ports sector looks ahead with more optimism, a revival by Australian-based international port investor Babcock & Brown Infrastructure (BBI) also appears hopeful after Canadian venture capitalist Brookfield Asset Management came to its rescue with a cornerstone shareholding investment.<\/p>\n
Stricken with crippling debt following the global financial crisis, BBI saw its share price nosedive to penny-dreadful status and began a process of asset sales to lessen its debt exposure.<\/p>\n
PD Ports in the UK and the world’s third-biggest coal export terminal, Dalrymple Bay in Queensland, were two of the cherries offered for picking. However when Brookfield took a 49.9% stake in Dalrymple Bay as part of an A$1.8bn (US$1.65m) support package, BBI was able to retain a 50.1% stake in the terminal.<\/p>\n
BBI now says it has no plans to sell its majority holding and indeed hinted it has not ruled out increasing capacity from the current 85m tonnes per year.<\/p>\n
The renewed optimism for the future, coupled with the capital restructure the company has gone through, appears to have set BBI on a new track forward. This includes the option for BBI to buy back the stake in Dalrymple Bay from Brookfield at a specified price on the fifth anniversary of the agreement, should Brookfield wish to sell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ports down under have been spared the worst of the recession, as Dave and Iain MacIntyre report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":7873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-7872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oceania"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872","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=7872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7874,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions\/7874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7872"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=7872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}