Omani port begins major crane upgrade

Once completed in early 2025, the US$300 million terminal expansion project will see annual capacity increase by 20% to 6 million teu, making Salalah a key hub for access to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent and East Africa.

The project is being carried out by APM Terminals Project Execution together with APM Terminals Asset Engineering and APM Terminals Crane & Engineering Services.

It includes upgrades to all six existing berths and expansion of the yard. In addition to the new ship-to-shore cranes, planned new equipment include 12 electric rubber-tyred gantry cranes, two reach stackers, three electric empty container handlers and 30 trucks and trailers.

The Port of Salalah is responsible for the supporting civil and IT infrastructure, including building a new access road, and new power distribution substation. This will support the terminal’s decarbonisation goals, through the switch to hybrid and battery electric container handling equipment.

The new fully electric cranes have a 75m outreach and can handle vessels 26 containers deep. A lifting height of 58m above the rail and 77m total hoist height (including below rail) and a rated capacity under spreader of 65 tonnes mean they are capable of serving ultra large container vessels currently in operation.

A further six cranes are due to arrive in the second quarter of this year. Replacing four lower specification cranes, the total of ten new cranes will increase the number of ship-to-shore cranes at the terminal to 27.