Sea Facility News

Container throughput at the Port of Salalah, part of the APM Terminals Global Terminal Network, reached 1.584 million TEU* in the first half of 2016, representing a 29% increase over volume handled during the same period the year prior. The completion of a new deep-water General Cargo and Liquid Bulk Terminal in December 2015 has enabled significant growth, with the facility handling approximately one million metric tons monthly. Some of the container volume growth is the result of Salalah’s proximity to the open sea, and its ability to accommodate the largest of the Ultra-Large Container Ships (ULCS) entering into the Asia/Europe trade lanes. Approximately 90% of Salalah’s container traffic is transshipment cargo movement.

The MSC shipping company is to consolidate all its activities in the port of Antwerp in the Deurganck dock, on the left bank of the Scheldt. The Port Authority board of directors gave the go-ahead for the move on Monday evening. The transfer is necessary in order to permit further expansion by MSC in Antwerp. The shipping company announced at the end of last year that it wished to have a new location below the locks, not only because its present site in the Delwaide dock had reached saturation point but also because of the increasing size of the ships being introduced. The Deurganck dock was the obvious choice, as it is already used by the other members of the P3 alliance of which MSC forms part, and furthermore the alliance plans to make even greater use of it in future.

Cargotec’s business area Kalmar has received an order for three rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) cranes from Liscont Operadores de Contentores, SA in Lisbon, Portugal. The equipment will be delivered during the first half of 2010. The order comprises three Kalmar E-ONE+ RTGs with a maximum lifting capacity of 40 tonnes. These 7+1 wide and 1-over-5 high cranes are for the expansion of the Liscont Container Terminal at Alcântara in the port of Lisbon. All the RTGs will be fitted with Kalmar Smartrail autosteering and container position verification systems and Remote Machine Interface (RMI), a tool for remote machine monitoring, maintenance tasking and reporting.

Wärtsilä expands its services capacity in the Netherlands with new, larger premises and a modern training centre. On April 9, Wärtsilä inaugurates a new Wärtsilä Land & Sea Academy training centre at Waalwijk in the Netherlands. With this large-scale training establishment, Wärtsilä is able to offer its customers, its own employees and educational institutions, a broad package of technical training programmes. In addition, Wärtsilä inaugurated new and larger services premises in Ijmuiden last week. The Wärtsilä Land & Sea Academy at Waalwijk covers an area of 2000 square metres, and contains nine schooling rooms, four conference rooms, and a large workshop. The new centre is one of ten Wärtsilä training centres worldwide.

A small fire broke out on Shell's North Cormorant platform, which was quickly extinguished. Reports indicated that there was no need for any of the 106 staff to be evacuated from the North Sea facility. The blaze in the turbine hood of a water injection pipe comes just three days after 113 staff had to be taken off the Petrofac-run Thistle Alpha platform, which suffered a three level fire on Sunday morning. Problems arose on North Cormorant, which is 109 miles northeast of Shetland but the platform's fire protection system sprung into action, and normal service resumed just 15 minutes later. Reports said that Shell will send a team out to probe the incident, and the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will investigate. Source: Energy Current