Taipei: In a busy seven days, Kaohsiung cracked 10m teu a year after it said it would this week, but has admitted it will relinquish its sixth spot on the global boxport rankings to Rotterdam. As a fillip though, Evergreen committed to renew its lease on two berths. Big new terminals across the strait in Xiamen and Fuzhou have siphoned off much of Taiwan's premier port's business, with transshipment boxes down 5.4% in the first 11 months.
Nevertheless, the total number of containers handled this year is expected to reach 10.2 million teu by year end - an increase of 4.4% from last year, officials at the Kaohsiung Harbour Bureau said yesterday. An expansion project at the port is currently underway to boost the port's handling capacity, which was designed to handle a maximum capacity of 10 million teu.
The first phase of the construction of a new 16-metre (draft) deep-water container terminal, should increase the port's handling capacity by two million teu a year.
The first of four 375-metre wharfs is scheduled to be operational by 2011, and the rest by 2013.
Rotterdam cracked the 10m mark in November compared to Kaohsiung's Christmas Eve crossing of the landmark figure.
Still, Evergreen Marine Corp (Taiwan) Ltd, which currently operates two large container terminals in the Port of Kaohsiung, has extended its lease on its Container Terminal No 4 facility (Piers 115 and 116) for a further 10 years.
The lease extension contract, which covers the period from 1 March 2008 to 28 February 2018, was signed by EMC's President, Jack Yen, and Director-General of the Kaohsiung Harbour Bureau, Ming-Hui Shieh, at the Evergreen International building in Taoyuan on 27 December.
Container Terminal No 4 opened for business in 1987 on a 206,480m_ site with a total quay length of 596m. The berths are served by six post-Panamax gantry cranes, 26 rail mounted gantry cranes and six empty container stackers.
In addition to Container Terminal No 4, Evergreen also operates Container Terminal No 5, which comprises three berths (Piers 79, 80 and 81).
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Mr Yen said: "This latest contract follows on from Evergreen's extension of the lease on its three berths at Kaohsiung's Container Terminal No 5, which was signed this summer. The lease extensions are part of our strategy to provide customers with efficient one-stop transport services at lower operational costs through investment in upstream and downstream businesses."
Evergreen earlier this week committed to pump more money into the new container facility in the north of Taipei. [28/12/07]
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