APM Terminals said productivity of cranes at its container terminal in Apapa, Nigeria, has risen 25 percent in the past twelve months, and berth productivity is 50 percent higher than a year ago, the Journal of Commerce reported.
Traffic increased by 26 percent in 2010 from a year earlier to 485,000 20-foot equivalent units, more than double the level in 2006, when APM won a 25-year concession to manage and develop one of Africa’s largest deep-water terminals.
APM, which has spent $190 million on the terminal in the past five years, said it plans to invest a further $80 million to upgrade facilities and expand annual capacity to 1.1 million TEUs by the end of 2012. The terminal has just taken delivery of five new rubber tired gantry cranes which will be operating alongside seven existing cranes at the end of the August.
APM introduced a new container scanning process in mid-July, which increased truck throughput by 62 percent in its first week and now averages 126 scanned boxes daily. Congestion in the scanning area, which previously caused queues of up to 200 trucks and delays of up to four days, has been eliminated, APM said.
A.P. Moller-Maersk’s port operating unit also runs terminals in Port Said; Egypt, Luanda, Angola and Monrovia, Liberia, and is building a facility at Pointe-Noire in the Republic of the Congo.
Traffic increased by 26 percent in 2010 from a year earlier to 485,000 20-foot equivalent units, more than double the level in 2006, when APM won a 25-year concession to manage and develop one of Africa’s largest deep-water terminals.
APM, which has spent $190 million on the terminal in the past five years, said it plans to invest a further $80 million to upgrade facilities and expand annual capacity to 1.1 million TEUs by the end of 2012. The terminal has just taken delivery of five new rubber tired gantry cranes which will be operating alongside seven existing cranes at the end of the August.
APM introduced a new container scanning process in mid-July, which increased truck throughput by 62 percent in its first week and now averages 126 scanned boxes daily. Congestion in the scanning area, which previously caused queues of up to 200 trucks and delays of up to four days, has been eliminated, APM said.
A.P. Moller-Maersk’s port operating unit also runs terminals in Port Said; Egypt, Luanda, Angola and Monrovia, Liberia, and is building a facility at Pointe-Noire in the Republic of the Congo.