Dublin Port Company today officially opened its newly completed Alexandra Quay Container Terminal following a €35m investment. The opening was welcomed by The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Paschal Donohoe, T.D., the company said in its press release.
The opening marks the completion of the third and final phase of the development of the new facility. This third phase will enable the terminal to cater for an additional 80,000 TEUs (twenty foot equivalent units) per annum bringing the terminal’s total capacity to over 400,000 TEU per annum.
The initial two phases of the project created new runways for three rows of rubber tyred gantry cranes (RTGs), a type of large mobile crane used for stacking shipping containers.
The third and final phase added a fourth runway for RTGs and deepened and strengthened the quay wall to allow bigger container ships to be loaded and discharged with modern high speed ship-to-shore gantry cranes.
The terminal’s operator, Burke Shipping Group, has invested in a new seventh RTG and will take delivery of a ship-to-shore gantry crane later in the year. Both of these new cranes are being supplied by Liebherr of Killarney. The finished terminal has an area of 10.7 hectares and the completed development comes at a time when Dublin Port’s full year trading figures show a 7% increase for 2014, equalling the record levels of 2007.