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Penang Port expects the
development of Northern Corridor Economic Region
(NCER) to develop four northern Peninsular
Malaysian states will be a major boom for the
port.
The port, which last year handled 23 million
tones of cargo wants to carry out major port
expansion projects in anticipation of the
increase expected from the expansion of economic
activities within the NCER.
“We will be enlarging our cargo handling
capacity, both for container and conventional
berthing facilities to cope with the expansion
in demand for port facilities and services
expected from RM177 billion investments in the
NCER,” said the chief operating officer of
Penang Port Sdn Bhd, Mohd Niana Merican.
“We will be expanding our container terminal at
North Butterworth Container Terminal (NBCT) by
another 600 metres and this will bring the
entire length of the NBCT to 1.5km,” said Naina.
The completion of the additional berths will
allow the port to accommodate 7 vessels at any
one time. In tandem with this development depth
alongside will also be dredged to 13 meters from
the current depth of 11.5meters, he added.
“We will be acquiring six new super post panamax
gantry cranes and 15 rubber tyred gantry cranes
and this will enlarge our box handling capacity
to 1.8 million TEUss, “ said Niana.
Further long term plans include extending the
quayline by a further 1.5 km which to provide
the port with three km long quayline and a
capacity to handle four million TEUs.
This will developed in stages, said Niana.
Naina said as an immediate measure to enhance
its handling capacity, the port has taken
delivery of two units of post-panamax quay
cranes recently. In addition, the port would be
taking delivery of two more harbor cranes to
handle the increasing volume of box traffic at
the port. With new these deliveries the port
will have nine quay cranes and two harbour
cranes to handle container traffic.
As for the conventional cargo handling, the port
will be developing a 100 hectares complex for
handling and storage of various bulk cargoes.
The development of enlarged bulk cargo terminal
will able to accommodate additional two ships at
any point of time and the terminal would be
directly linked with a conveyor belt to the
customers facilities.
Currently the port handles grains, soybeans and
raw sugar.
“We will also focusing on the development of
central tankage facilities to cope with
expanding demand for the DG-cargoes. Presently,
Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and Vinyl Chloride
Monomer (VCM), are conveyed via pipelines to
private onshore installations beyond the
terminals boundaries,” said Niana.
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