Saldanha surfs steel price wave
In South Africa, too, multi-million dollar improvements are taking place at the countrys biggest deepwater port, Saldanha, to improve the export capacity of the iron ore bulk handing facility, at a time when developments have been brought forward in response to high steel prices. While steel prices have now peaked, demand for South African iron ore in Far Eastern markets is not expected to decline.
The contract to refurbish and upgrade the bulk handling facilities will reach completion by the end of 2005, to almost double the export capacity of the iron ore quay. With the last financial year seeing exports through the terminal of 25.9m tons, against a design capacity of 18m tons, the US$145m investment is certainly not before time and boosting export capacity to 39m tons a year at a stroke.
It will see deployment of a second tippler and three new stacker-reclaimers (two for replacement), all from Metso, in the stockpile area and increasing storage capacity by 50%.
One of these latter units is already up and running. Meanwhile on the quayside two new Krupp travelling and slewing shiploaders have been installed.
Related Articles
CONTAINER & CARGO HANDLING
TERMINAL OPERATIONS
CONTAINER & CARGO HANDLING