The Port of Tanjung Pelepas will invest M$1.4bn (US$444m) over the next three years to upgrade its facilities to cope with the introduction of larger vessels.
“The industry is continuously evolving and shipping lines continue to build larger vessels to a achieve economies of scales. Ports will therefore need to deploy bigger capacity cranes. For example, Evergreen is building 10 mega-sized vessels with a 13,800 TEU load capacity,” PTP chairman Sidik Shaik Osman, told Malaysian newspaper the Star.
Meanwhile Maersk currently has 20 mega-sized vessels under construction in South Korea. Known as the Maersk Triple-E these will become the largest container vessels on the water.
According to Shaik there are currently no cranes in operation with the ability to discharge these new ships. “In order to serve these giant vessels, ports will need new cranes which are more sophisticated, higher and have longer outreach,” he said.
Tanjung Pelepas will undertake the upgrade as Maersk Line selected it for its ‘Daily Maersk’ programme, along with international ports at Felixstowe, Bremerhaven, Rotterdam, Yantian, Shanghai and Ningbo.
“We plan to purchase eight of these cranes for at a total cost of M$250m. We will also invest in 32 additional units of RTG cranes at a total cost of more than M$200m. Our plans also include building two new berths,” he said.
