Aden Port Development and the Opening of the Aden Container Terminal [Archives:1999/32/Business & Economy]
2 of 2 in a series
Captain Abdulmoti H. Mohammed
Aden
Aden Container Terminal (ACT)
Yeminvest and PSA Corporation, with Hyundai as main contractors, are completing the new deepwater container terminal on the North Shore, known as the Aden Container Terminal (ACT).
The quay wall for the ACT can be taken to a depth of 18 meters, four meters deeper than Jabel Ali, Jeddah or Colombo. The ACT will be able to handle the world’s largest existing and planned container ships. Initial dredging is being carried out to 16 meters (53 feet) alongside and in the outer section of the channel. Tidal patterns effectively give the port 16.8 meters alongside for 18 hours each day almost the whole of the year.
The first phase of the North Shore berths, 700 meters in length, is being opened in March 1999. Phase II will provide a further 350 meters and Phase III 600 meters to give a Terminal length of 1650 meters. Other phases are expected to follow.
The terminal has been equipped with the latest super post-Panamax quay cranes, with an outreach of 57 meters. Rubber-typed Yard gantry cranes, reefer points, engineering maintenance and other facilities to match and support quay crane capacity are also being installed. A power station, desalination plant and sewage treatment plant are also being built.
Commercial and economic impact of the Aden Container Terminal
The Construction of the ACT and the restoration of Aden’s former position as a regional service and distribution center will be a key element in the economic development of Yemen. Its’ importance to the port, to the city of Aden and to Yemen cannot be over-emphasized. YPA believes that this terminal and the associated ‘Fee Zone’ will prove to be the ‘key’ project to attract inward investment for infrastructure development and a wide range of industrial activities.
The project “makes a statement” on improvements in political and economic stability in Yemen over the past three years which other investors can recognize and respond to. There is already evidence that major companies outside Yemen are responding.
There will inevitably be competition from other Regional Ports. Some of these grew impressively over the past 30 years and traffic in the more successful ones in dominated by container transshipment. Container movement worldwide increased at around 8-9% annually in the 1990’s and is predicted to grow at between 7-8% until 2010. Container handling was a market which did not exist when Aden was a major bunkering port, but has become a market which Aden can and will bid to share.
A growing percentage of the very large container ships that currently handle the world’s ‘break-bulk’ cargoes are now in the 6000+ TEU class. Ships carrying over 4,500 TEU’s, which currently make up only 2% of the world fleet, are forecast to form 33% of the world’s container fleet by 2010.
With the Aden container Terminal coming into service this year, Aden is ready to handle ships of this size, and larger, and to re-gain its position as a regional hub port.
Meanwhile, Ma’alla Terminal continues to provide an important service for the port and the nation. It generates valuable foreign exchange earnings from the revenue earned by handling transshipment containers and also allows Yemen to import, with much greater efficiency, the raw materials and finished products required as foodstuffs and for the construction and other industries, which the country requires. The small, but growing export market is also served by Ma’alla.
In future it is anticipated that the ACT and Ma’alla will complement each other, with the smaller mainline and feeder container vessels using Ma’alla for their transshipment business and the largest ones calling at the ACT.
Marine services
YPA has been under pressure in recent months in the provision of its marine services to the inner harbor, fishing harbor, oil harbor and other harbor. Demands on its pilotage, towing and mooring services have increased with the growth in container transshipment business.
It has taken action to improve these services by bringing in addition pilot boat, mooring boat, two work boats (small tugs) and harbor tugs. It is now arranging for the repair and extensive refurbishment of the two older Voith Schneider propelled tugs so that the new ones can be primarily allocated for use by container ships at the ACT and Ma’alla. It also plans to order two additional larger tugs.
Other port activities
Aden is not only a container port. Other services have been provided in the past and will be provided in future. The Ma’alla Terminal was defined as a ‘Free Port’ area, which now offers duty-free storage, re-export and other Free Port services to traders and shippers operating in Yemen.
Ship bunkering is an obvious example of the services which Aden continues to offer. There is considerable interest in expanding present facilities and developing new ones to offer in-harbor and offshore bunkering services.
New bulk handling equipment at Ma’alla, greater economic activity and higher efficiency allowed Aden to raise its tonnage for major imported commodities by 87% in 1996 over 1995. YPA predicts that will increase to 1.4 million tones by the end of the century and to 1.9 million tones by 2003.
Ship repair services are also being seen as having considerable potential for expansion, and several companies have already looked at the National Dockyard with a view to refurbishing and expanding this. Classification Societies which were formerly based at Aden may be expected to re-establish offices at Aden. Aden already operates an important Fishing Harbor, with a large cold store for the country’s ‘fish wealth’, and fishing vessel repair services.
Marine surveying and insurance services will grow. At the airport a ‘cargo village’ will support sea-air cargo business. Crew changing, supply of spare parts for machinery and electrical items, ship stores etc. are also expected to expand.
Calls by passenger ships, at around 18-20 per year at present, help to develop the growing tourist business in Yemen, while yachts find Aden a good place to visit for fuel, stores and communications and many now call during the winter months.
Future port development
When one looks at the chart of Aden, the size of the natural harbor contained inside the rim of hills and shore is impressive. The twelve kilometers east-west and six north-south provide a very large area of sheltered water. When Captain Hanes first surveyed the harbor in 1835, water depths on the south side of what is now the inner harbor were around 20 feet. It needed 11 years to complete the first deepening program to increase the depth to 30 feet.
Dredging technology has moved on and the current deepening by 4 meters has taken a total of around 30 weeks. Sea bed materials of excellent quality are being used for constructing Phase I to II of the YPA has reclaimed over eighty hectares of land on the north side of the Rubble Mound for future construction.
YPA visualizes the expansion of the port to the west, to provide a sheltered basin within the natural basin formed by hills and shore. I would be developed for various purposes, including industrial processes which need access to deep quay space. Yemen can provide workers for some of the most labor-intensive industries currently looking for sites and, with easy access from all points of the compass, it would be difficult to improve on Aden’s location.
Conclusions
Visitors to the Port of Aden often comment that Aden is a very ‘real’ place. A real city, with real people, with a real port in a place where God intended one to be. After years of decline and under-utilization, Aden will enter the next millennium challenging other for its rightful place as major distribution center. The dreams of three years ago are being transformed into to ACT. YPA believes in the future of Aden, and hope that many of you will have good cause for optimism and confidence in Aden in the coming months and years. We trust that you will catch something of the vision we have whenever we look out from the hills which gthis port.
You will be following in the steps of some very famous travelers.
Port of Aden, Republic of Yemen
March 1999
While a great deal of interest has focused on the new Aden Container opening in March this year, the revival and expansion of port activity at Aden is already very evident from the success of the Ma’alla Terminal operated by Yemen Ports Authority (YPA).
The Ma’allah Terminal, which was opened in 1991 and is equipped with two Panamax capable quay gantry cranes, has successfully attracted regional container transshipment business to the port over the past 12 months. The Singapore-based Pacific International Line (PIL), has now used Aden for its transshipment operations between Red Sea ports and the Far East since June 1998. Yemen Ports Authority has provided PIL with a cost effective and efficient service, helping to boost Terminal container throughput from 13,456 TEU’s in 1997 to 57,537 TEU’s in 1998, an increase of 328% over the twelve months. On an annual basis, the Ma’alla Terminal expects to work close to 100,000 TEU’s in 1999 as present trends continue.
In addition to the additional business generated by container transshipment, the port has seen a useful rise of 45% in national container imports and exports from 13,456 to 19,505 TEU’s in 1998. This comes mainly from the rise in general cargo imports, but partly from a 7 fold improvement in fish exports in 1998, resulting in much-increased use of the 32 reefer points at the Ma’alla Terminal.
The Port Authority has been examining its requirments for additional countainer handling equipmetn to further improve its transhipment services at Ma’alla. Aden looks forward to again becoming a major player in the region on the basis of its success at Ma’alla and the additional business which the Aden Container Terminal, run by PSA Corporation, will bring to the port.
Bulk and other dry cargoes imported at the Ma’alla Terminal have also improved from 885,934 tons in 1997 to 1,285,370 in 1998, a rise of 45%. Exports have increased from 74,312 tons in 1997 to 380,369 tons in 1998, a rise of 412%. This was partly due to the rise in containerized exports, but also more than doubled in 1998.
YPA took timely delivery of two new tugs, a pilot boats and other support craft in 1998 to improve its marine services and is actively pursuing the acquisition of two further tugs and other craft in 1999.
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