Khalifa Port expands capacity, welcomes new cranes

Source: Khalifa Port

Abu Dhabi Ports Company (ADPC) and Abu Dhabi Terminals (ADT) the container terminal operator, have announced the arrival of three of the world’s largest and most modern ship-to-shore (STS) quay cranes at Khalifa Port.

According to a media statement, the Super Post Panamax quay cranes, which were delivered during the second week of January, were produced by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry Co. Ltd. in China with a cost of 28 million USD, and travelled overseas on especially built ships to Khalifa Port’s container terminal, the first semi-automated container terminal in the region.

One STS crane is 126.5 meters high and weighs 1,932 tons. It has an outreach of 65 meters (22 containers) and a lifting capacity of 90 tons.

The three new quay cranes will join the six already operational cranes at Khalifa Port’s current 2.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent unit) capacity container terminal, making it a total of nine STS cranes.

In addition, six cutting edge automated stacking cranes (ASC) have recently joined the former 30 ASCs at Khalifa Port, and a further six are expected to arrive in coming months, both batches representing an overall investment of 42 million USD.

Commenting on the recent deliveries, Mohamed Juma Al Shamisi, CEO, ADPC, said, “After more than 100,000 TEUs passed through Khalifa Port last year in October, which was the highest number of containers ever handled in a single month in Abu Dhabi, the start of the new year has already been promising and signaled a significant increase in the Emirate’s import and export activities over the next twelve months. By investing in our state-of-the-art infrastructure we are further establishing Khalifa Port as one of the best equipped and most technologically advanced ports in the world.”

Elaborating further, Mr Martijn Van de Linde, CEO, Abu Dhabi Terminals (ADT), said, “The new STS cranes will further increase Khalifa Port’s capacity adding 750,000 TEUs of throughput capacity to the terminal. We have continued to register double digit growth in 2013 and the new capacity is required to keep pace with the rapidly growing Abu Dhabi and UAE markets.”

The industry leading STS cranes at Khalifa Port are specifically used for unloading container vessels which have become notably bigger over the past years. Vessels with a container volume of up to 14,000 TEUs are currently calling at Khalifa Port whose nine STS cranes will be able to handle up to 315 containers per hour (35 containers per crane, per hour).

Khalifa Port’s cutting edge ASCs, which were delivered by Finnish production company Konecranes, are operated through an especially designed operating system and used to organize the containers in the dedicated container yard. Two ASCs cover one area (stack) in which up to 2,000 TEUs can be stacked. With the six newly delivered and six expected ASCs, the overall stacking capacity at Khalifa Port’s container yard will increase by 40%.