APM Terminals will expand its presence in the Port of Tangier, opposite its long-established terminal in Algeciras, Spain, by building a second $863 million port complex that will have the ability to handle 5 million TEUs annually.
APM Terminals is becoming a giant on both sides of the “Pillars of Hercules.”
The terminal arm of the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group has won a 30-year concession from the Tanger Med Special Agency (TMSA) and will develop a transshipment terminal in Tangier, Morocco that will have the ability to handle 5 million TEUs annually, APMT said in a statement.
The new “Tanger Med 2” complex will cost 758 million euros ($863 million) and is scheduled to become operational in 2019. It will be the first automated terminal in Africa and will feature technology pioneered at the APM Terminals Maasvlakte II Rotterdam terminal which opened in 2015.
Tanger Med 2 will feature a 2,000 meter quay and the new terminal will complement APM Terminals’ existing Tanger Med 1 facility, which started operations in July of 2007. Tanger Med 1 handled 1.7 million TEUs in 2015, close to the nominal capacity of 1.8 million TEU noted on the APM Terminals website.
APM Terminals said its sister company Maersk Line will be an important customer of the new terminal, which is located on Africa’s northwest coast near the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea on the Strait of Gibraltar, known in antiquity as the Pillars of Hercules.
The new terminal will increase the total annual throughput capacity in the Port of Tangier to over 9 million TEUs.
Dirk Visser, a senior analyst at the consulting firm and newsletter publisher Dynamar in the Netherlands, noted that Eurogate also has a terminal in Tangier. That facility has a 1.3 million-TEU capacity, according to the Eurogate website.
The new facility will give APM Terminals yet another large operation on the western end of the Mediterranean Sea. The company has long operated a large terminal in Algeicras, Spain, near Gibralter, which terminal handled 3.5 million TEUs in 2015.
“The location of the Tangier and Algeciras facilities provide a natural transshipment location for cargoes moving on vessels to and from Africa from Europe and the Far East on the primary East/West shipping route through the Mediterranean Sea,” APMT said. “Over 200 cargo vessels pass through the Strait of Gibraltar daily on major liner services linking Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa.”
“While African ports at present account for only 4.5 percent of global port throughput (including transshipment cargoes), the United Nations 2015 World Population Prospects Report projects that more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050 will occur in Africa, with the African population more than doubling from 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion over the next three and a half decades,” it added. “Significant investment in port and transportation infrastructure will be required to meet the anticipated needs of the expanding African population and corresponding economic growth.”
“Transhipment is a topic for the West Africa trade,” said Visser, who noted that MSC has been shipping West Africa-Asia cargo through the port of Lomé in Togo where the MSC affiliate TIL Group has a major facility.
He said Transnet, the South Africa port authority, also has ambitions to make Ngqura, midway between Durban and Cape Town, a major transhipment port.
Visser noted that Tangier could also potentially be used as a hub instead of Rotterdam for feeder cargo to destined for ports in North Europe, the British Isles or even the Baltic.
“Apart from location, which is comparable to opposite Algeciras, a very important attraction for terminal operators (and carriers) of Tanger-Med Port no doubt is the cost of labor at the new Moroccan port, said to be said to be up to 40 percent lower (according to some sources even just 25 percent of Algeciras labor) when the first terminal of APM Terminals took off,” Dynamar added.
APM Terminals will create a new organization in Tangier, adding a large number of new jobs and be responsible for the completion of the terminal yard, surface, buildings, container handling equipment, and integrated automated systems.
The quay wall construction and site reclamation for the first 1,200 meters has been completed by the Tanger Med Port Authority, which is part of TMSA.
Spanning the Pillars of Hercules
