Vale Oman is looking to initiate the expansion of its facility at the Port of Sohar 'as soon as possible,' as the company celebrated the arrival of its first very large ore carrier (VLOC) - the largest ship to ever call at the port.
With a capacity of 400,000 tonnes, Vale Brasil arrived at the port last week, containing enough iron ore to build 450,000 cars. The ship is the largest of a number of ore carriers which Vale hopes will make between 200 and 400 visits to and from the Sohar plant, both importing raw materials and exporting iron pellets.
As a result, the company said it hopes to begin work on the second phase of the plant's expansion, which will see the company double the facility's capacity from 9mn tonnes of iron pellets per year to 18mn tonnes.
Jamal Aziz, deputy CEO of Sohar Industrial Port Company and CEO of Freezone Sohar, said that the ship landed at the company's US$250mn deepwater jetty, which will also be used "to handle other minerals and materials" in the future.
Marcelo Figueiredo, general project manager at Vale Oman, said, "We have started design work for phases 2a and 2b. We will do 2a first and then, depending on what the market is like and how set we are with the project, we will begin work on 2b."
Speaking at a function to mark the ship's arrival, Figueiredo added that Oman Shipping Company is in the process of building Vale four more ore carriers, explaining that the first two will be inducted by early 2012 for a 'shuttle' operation.
© Muscat Daily 2011
