As Port Strategy goes to press, the MSC Group is undertaking due diligence as part of the exclusive process it has agreed with Bollore to acquire 100 per cent of Bolloré Africa Logistics, comprising all of Bollore’s transport and logistics activities in Africa, on the basis of an enterprise value of €5.7 billion.
The lessons of the past indicate that an important ingredient in the due diligence process will be gaining the approval of the host port authorities with whom Bollore holds terminal concessions.
Is it with this in mind that Cyrille Bollore, CEO, Bollore and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in the Ivory Coast in late January?
Bollore has been involved in container terminal operations in Abidjan, Ivory Coast since 2004. It operates a container terminal in conjunction with APM Terminals (APMT) and together with APMT has won the concession to build a new deep-water container terminal adjacent to the existing facility. The new terminal is expected to be operational at the end of 2022 and possessing the ability to accommodate vessels of up to 14,000TEU is seen to be a gamechanger.
