A new deepwater port in Bahrain is now being served by APL, one of the world's largest container shipping lines, boosting the country's plans to become a transshipment centre for the northern Gulf.
Khalifa Bin Salman Port is aiming to replicate the success of major transshipment centres such as Dubai's Jebel Ali, which serves large ocean-going vessels, unloading containers and reloading them on to smaller craft to serve regional ports.
"APL operating from Bahrain is a good, good sign," said Hassan al Majid, the director general of Bahrain's General Organisation of Sea Ports. "It shows we are competing with regard to transshipment."
Khalifa Bin Salman Port was inaugurated in December and replaces the smaller Mina Salman, which was Bahrain's main maritime gateway for more than 50 years.
Mina Salman operations were hampered by the depth of its channel, limiting the new class of huge ocean-going carriers. The new port was built to serve the country's growing trade flows and to be a regional centre for the northern Gulf which includes Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and northern Iran.
Bahrain is now being served by an APL "mother ship", Mr al Majid said. Previously, the shipping line handled its transshipment operations at Jebel Ali, he said.
APL officials were unavailable for comment yesterday. The company is a subsidiary of NOL Group of Singapore and holds 4.2 per cent of the worldwide container shipping market, or capacity to carry 582,000 TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent containers, per year, according to the research company AXS-Alphaliner.
According to the General Organisation of Sea Ports, Bahrain's shipping volumes grew by 3 per cent last year to 320,000 containers. Almost all of those were unloaded at the port for internal distribution by land.
The overall figure was a fraction of the activity seen at Dubai's Jebel Ali, which can handle more than 12 million containers a year.
But the growth was still cheered by Mr al Majid, in light of the contraction in global trade last year. DP World, the Dubai-based global ports operator, reported a drop in container volumes of 8 per cent last year compared with 2008, while the industry-wide decline was 12 per cent. "Most ports did not show any positive growth - we did," Mr al Majid said.
However, he said the true measure of the port's success in attracting new business was to serve shipping lines as quickly as possible. Currently, the port is able to handle 35 container moves per hour.
"Higher efficiencies are the most important thing to attract transshipments to the northern region," he said. "Bahrain is very competitive in this and also in its tariff."
This year, the port hopes to expand its traffic dramatically and handle 400,000 to 450,000 containers, with about a third of the traffic bound for transshipment, he said.
"We started the port in a situation like no other port has ever gone through," he said. "As we look into 2010 and the global economic recovery, we are ready to see positive growth."
By Ivan Gale
© The National 2010
