APM Terminals has teamed up with Dutch consortium Van Oord-BAM to build a new deep-water container terminal at Puerto Limón/Moín on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, which handles more than 80 per cent of the country’s maritime commerce. Construction on the first phase of TCM (Terminal de Contenedores de Moín) is due to begin in early 2014 and the project is scheduled to open 36 months after building work gets underway.
The facility will have an initial annual throughput of 1.3m TEUs, rising to 2.7m TEUs at full build-out. With an eventual depth of 18 meters, it will be able to accommodate the 12,000 TEU vessels that will pass through the widened Panama Canal once the lock expansion project has been completed in 2015. At present, the port is limited to vessels of 2,500 TEU capacity.
APM, which has invested more than US$1bn in the project, was awarded a 33-year concession to design, build, operate and maintain TCM by the Costa Rica government in 2011. “We are excited about our new dredging and construction partners and the important role they will play to make TCM an environmental leader and model to other terminals,” said Paul Gallie, managing director of APM Terminal’s Moín Container Terminal, adding that he hoped the terminal would become a magnet for future investment in Costa Rica. The project will create 400 new direct jobs and up to 5,000 indirect jobs, injecting US$4bn into the national economy.
