Costa Rica win for APM Terminals

It’s a win over a two lawsuits brought by the Atlantic Port Authority union and the National Banana Workers union: these claimed, amongst other things, that the project lacked the necessary detailed environmental and engineering studies. Another claim centred on a possible monopoly by the operator. All were dismissed by the court.

The actions seemed to be intended to block the construction of what will be the largest single privately funded infrastructure project in Costa Rica. Even at present Moin handles around four fifths of the country’s cargo and APM Terminals has placed the new container development to handle the extra large ships which are expected to flow into the region from the Panama Canal expansion.

APMT Moin’s managing director Paul Gallie told PS: “Costa Rica needs to be competitive and needs better, deep water access in order to participate in the global market place, after all, the direct competition is not within Cost Rica, its coming from outside. At the moment Cost Rica is behind the curve by a whole generation and it needs to catch up.” He added that even the unions behind the suit seemed to accept this point.

This will certainly be helped by APM Terminals investment of around US$992m in the project which will start with two berths, a 40 ha reclamation and 600 metres of quay. When finished, the terminal will have five berths, 1,500 meters of quay and an 18 metre deep fairway.

APM Terminals was not alone in fighting the case, as it was one of a group of six co-defendants which included government departments, explained Mr Gallie. He added that the disputed environmental and technical studies are now being performed during the pre-construction period, a “normal procedure” used to finalise the design and gain the relevant permits.