Jul.4--MALAYSIA's Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) will invest MYR1.4 billion (US$441.9 million) on eight new quay cranes and 32 additional rubber tyre gantries (RTGs) in the next three years, as well as building two new berths, reports the Malaysia Star.

"With the new berths and equipment, we will be able to increase our capacity from 8.4 million TEU to 10 million TEU per annum. Looking at the rate we are growing, it looks like we will need to build a new berth with supporting equipment every year," said PTP chairman Datuk Mohd Sidik Shaik Osman.

"Last year, we handled 230,000 TEU from the northern region and 320,000 TEU from the central region of Malaysia. These are headed for far-away destinations and need to be connected to the larger mainline vessels. They are being transhipped at PTP due to the more modern facilities and the availability of the larger long-haul vessels calling here," he said.

"The industry is continuously evolving and shipping lines continue to build larger vessels to achieve economies of scale. Ports will therefore need to deploy bigger capacity cranes. For example, Evergreen is building ten 13,800-TEU ships," said Mr Osman.

Maersk Line is also building twenty 18,000-TEU ships Thus PTP along with six other international ports (Felixstowe, Bremerhaven, Rotterdam, Shenzhen-Yantian, Shanghai and Ningbo) have been selected by Maersk Line for their Daily Maersk programme will have to build new cranes to accommodate the biggest ships in the world.

Mr Osman said that the port was on track to handle eight million TEU in 2012. "The figures look encouraging. Last month, we handled 679,617 TEU, the highest ever handled by PTP in any single month. Prior to this, the highest number of containers handled in a single month was in March when we handled 679,256 TEU," he said.

(Source:shippingazette)