MOL vessel call inaugurates London Gateway

DP World chairman Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, vice chairman Jamal Majid Bin Thaniah, group ceo Mohammed Sharaf, and chairman of MOL Liner Junichiro Ikeda came to the terminal to welcome the vessel, which berthed at 23-00 hrs on Wednesday.

The call of the vessel at London Gateaway marks the official beginning of the port’s operations, with berth 1 dredged to 16m and ready to accept vessels. The remaining berths are still to be constructed.

“It’s a historic day,” Mohammed Sharaf told Seatrade Global. “London started as a port city, and as the city grew, the ports were shifted away. Now the port is coming back to support the growth of the UK and London.”

This stage of the project is costing DP World “approximately £1.5bn,” Sharaf added, the majority of that expenditure having been on initial infrastructure work of land reclamation, dredging 100km of river and improving road and rail links. The completed project, which will include a vast logistics park, will bring an estimated £3.2bn into the UK economy annually and provide up to 36,000 jobs, compared to the 10,000 so far created.

MOL Caledon is one of eight vessels on the South Africa Europe Container Service (SAECS), which in August became London Gateway’s first liner client when it announced it was switching its UK calls from Tilbury to London Gateway.

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