Private company to build container terminal at T’di Port
The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) and Ibistek Ghana Limited have signed a $370 million concession agreement for the development of a container terminal to handle two million 20-footer equivalent units (TEUs) of containers at the Takoradi Port annually.
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Under the agreement, the facility, which will be equipped with gantry cranes, will also serve as a convergence point to receive imports and transhipment cargo and further serve as a one-stop-shop for all container procedures at the Takoradi Port.
Work on the 25-year project, is expected to start in November 2017 and be completed in 30 months.
Ibistek had earlier developed a 97,000 square metre space off-dock terminal at the port, at the cost of $69 million which became operational in April 2016.
Port development
At the signing ceremony in Tema on Saturday, the acting Director General of GPHA, Mr Paul Asare Ansah, said port development required partnership with the private sector to leverage developments and profitable operations.
Although there were initial protests by the workers of the Takoradi Port about the off-dock terminal project, which they said would have left them out of certain activities at the port, Mr Ansah said all outstanding issues had been addressed.
He said the processes of the concession was made open in order to foster an understanding between all partners.
Mr Ansah stated that the port would still handle Roll on, Roll off (RoRo) cargo, as well as bulk cargo, while conventional vessels would be made to go to the container terminal when it was fully developed and became operational.
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He maintained that the scale of port development required diversification and alternative source of funding, since multiple projects were being carried out at the same time.
“We have done single sourced developments in the past using GPHA’s balance sheets, however, we need to be ingenious in tapping into the various models of funding to ensure that we are able to achieve developments we want to see,” Mr Ansah said.
Ibistek
Giving an overview of the project, the Chairman and Director of Ibistek, Mr Kwame Gyan, said there would be dredging works within the allocated space to create a 16 metre draft to receive bigger vessels that could carry up to 22,000 container vessels.
He said the old habour, which was built in 1928 with its basin of 9.2 metre draft (depth of sea) and had been the hub of exportation of the country’s commodity export such as cocoa and manganese, had not seen any major improvements, thus contributing to the rise in business cost at that port as against what persisted in Tema.
“A harbour space of about 172 acres will be dredged and backfilled to create the container of 510,000 square metres of paved surface for the multipurpose terminal,” Mr Gyan said.
He expressed the hope that the project would become a flagship one that would eliminate bottlenecks in transit from Ghana to landlocked countries across the sub-region.