Maputo — The private consortium Cornelder de Moçambique, which is responsible for managing the central Mozambican Port of Beira, has announced that, over the last five months, it reached record figures in cargo handling.
According to the company's Managing Director, Jan De Vries, from January to May this year, 161,000 containers were handled at the Port of Beira, compared to 102,000 in the same period last year.
In the general cargo terminal, 1.6 million tonnes were handled, compared to 1.4 million in the first half of last year.
These figures categorically deny the claim made by the head of the Beira Trade Association, Felix Machado, who alleged that this year alone Beira has lost over 500,000 tonnes of cargo to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam.
Machado's claim was uncritically repeated by parts of the Mozambican media which did not bother to contact Cornelder for its reaction.
"The completion of the rehabilitation of the first phase of the mineral terminal, the acquisition of modern equipment for transporting cargo and the use of state-of-the-art technology and human resources are all factors that are contributing to the improvement in cargo handling at the Port of Beira', said de Vries.
According to de Vries, Cornelder de Moçambique has set a productivity record in the handling of chrome, achieving a daily average of 14,446 tonnes, a 40 per cent improvement on the previous record of 10,400 tonnes per day.
"The excellent productivity is the result of heavy investment in ore handling capacity. The company has just completed the first phase of construction of the mineral Terminal, which includes four hectares of storage area for various bulk and bagged ores, where they can be handled efficiently', he said.
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As a result of these improvements, he said, new intercontinental shipping lines are calling at the Port of Beira, which has been recognized as the most efficient terminal in southern Africa in the last two years.
This year, there will be new investments to meet the demand from the countries of the hinterland.
"At the container terminal, in a fortnight's time, we'll start removing one of the old warehouses and, in its place, we'll ensure the expansion of almost four hectares of a new park. Also as part of the modernization of the infrastructure, we will be acquiring four new modern cranes', said de Vries.
He added that a recent engineering study showed that "we have the capacity to accommodate cranes for ships capable of transporting 10,000 containers in a single voyage.'
"The volumes we handle today are ten times greater than 25 years ago, but unfortunately the roads are the same, which creates a huge constraint on the flow of cargo in and out of the Port', he said. "We believe that greater coordination between the various users of the Port of Beira, including the government, the private sector and the municipality, can find a solution in the short term'.
