Onwards and upwards

BNCT has a target to reach of 1.8m teu capacity by late 2014 when it intends to add over £1m teu with phase 2 of its expansion project. For this reason, it’s important for the operator to attract business from all quarters.

So Young Kang, general manager, commercial team, BNCT, said to Port Strategy: “The Busan New Port is designed to have the mainline containerships mainly. However, due to TS cargos for example, the feeders also call some terminals in new port while most of the feeders call Busan North Port.

“Our target is set based on mainliner volume. However, of course, feeder volume will help us to reach the target”, he added.

The maiden call of Korea’s Heung-A’s MV Lantau Bee recently is a clear demonstration of the port’s ability to cater equally for call sizes of more than 2000 moves or smaller calls of 200 moves or less.

Meanwhile, BNCT is busy drumming up support for the order of additional cranes for the terminal – this has to be done before the progression into phase 2 of the expansion project because they take 14 months to arrive.

The operator says that the cranes are fundamental in determining when it will have additional capacity available and keeping the development on schedule.

Busan Port is separated as New Port and North Port. There are five container terminal operators in new port, including BNCT.