Karachi Port has been one of the bright spots in the south Asian ports constellation this year.
A welter of new services, including from OOCL, Yang Ming, APL, PIL, Evergreen and Cosco, have all started calling at the Pakistani port.
This is down to four main factors. First, the cascade of tonnage from the depressed transpacific that has filtered to the intra-Asia and Far East-Middle East services. Secondly, the rather full nature of India's ports to the south. Thirdly, as of May this year Karachi Port has been able to accommodate deep-draft vessels, over 12-metre; the 275 m long, 13.6m draft Hyundai Admiral being the first larger sized ship to call in the middle of May.
Finally, lines are recognising Karachi's potential over the botched opening of Gwadar which has not gone to plan. While Gwadar's intermodal links are poor, Karachi's continue to improve, with a new overpass opening this May for instance.
Moreover, in November last year the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) and Hong Kong's Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH) signed a concession agreement to set up a $1bn deep water container port.
KPT will invest $450m for infrastructure development for the project, which is a public-private partnership venture. HPH will invest $557m.
In the first phase, a 1,500-metre quay wall is being built to establish Pakistan's first deep water container terminal with a designed depth of 18 metres.
The concession was awarded on a build, operate and transfer basis for an initial lease of 25 years. The terminal will be capable of receiving and handling super post-panamax container ships with an annual throughput capacity of 3.1m teu.
KPT plans to hand over the first berth to HPH by 2009 and the subsequent berths at fixed intervals. The first ship is planned to arrive at the new terminal by 2010.
