Portal Industrial Cartagena Colombia - Forum - Contacts

Cartagena bucks the recession

13 Aug 2011

Unlike Coronel, Angamos or TCBuen, the box handling terminals at the Port of Cartagena - Colombia's leading Caribbean container handling port – are long established operations.
While the recession hit some regional box ports badly, Cartagena has gone from strength to strength, reporting a 25% increase alone in 2010, following one of 14% in 2009. This is even more remarkable given that 65% of all containers passing through the port are transhipped.

According to Alfonso Salas Trujillo, managing director of Cartagena Port Company (SPRC): “In 2011, SPRC and Contecar forecast handling 1.8m teu, equivalent to year-on-year growth of 25%. In fact, over the last five years, Cartagena has experienced nothing but growth in this sector.”

To keep pace, investment in the port has been relentless. At SPRC, this amounted to $150m in 1993-2010, with a further $60m allocated for 2011-2012, while at Contecar $130m was ploughed into the business in 2007-2010, with an extra $100m to be invested in 2011-2012 and possibly as much as a further $300m set aside for 2013-2016. According to Mr Salas, terminals operated by both SPRC and Contecar therefore boast state-of-the-art handling equipment, while productivity is high.

“To date, combined investment has reached $290m, with $460m more still to come,” he says. “Currently, at Contecar, we're implementing the second phase of our Development Master Plan, while at SPRC we are already on phase III. The aim is to boost capacity to 4.5m teu. Furthermore, in addition to acquiring the latest handling equipment, we are extending our outer quay areas, dredging both turning circles and paving new stacking areas.”

The result is that Cartagena is the only port in the Caribbean currently capable of handling container vessels of up to 12,000 teu and these are expected to begin operating in the region once the Panama Canal expansion is complete.

As for existing infrastructure, SPRC has four berths offering a combined 922 metres of quay, while Contecar has two, totalling 420 metres. Currently, the largest vessels calling there are 5,500 teu, with average productivity reported by both terminals of 34 moves-per-crane-hour. Nowadays, the port offers connections to 595 ports in 136 countries via 31 shipping lines.

Significantly, of the three container terminal options available to shipping lines – SPRC, Contecar and El Bosque – the first two are effectively operated by the same company. According to Mr Salas, El Bosque is well suited for the handling of dry bulk cargo, but does also handle some containers, although annual capacity is limited to 120,000 teu.

- See more at: www.portstrategy.com/news101/world/south-america/south-america-box