Vessel Turnaround Time At Tema Port To Reduce To 4 Days

The turnaround time for vessels which transact business at the Tema port, which as at 2013 was six days will reduce to four days following the arrival of two brand new mobile harbour cranes at the Tema port over the weekend.

The two new cranes, which were purchased by the Ghana Ports & Harbours Authority (GPHA) from Germany at a cost of €4.6 million each is expected to improve upon the efficiency and productivity of the Tema Port.

Named 'Kofi Asamoah' and 'Andy Asare', two hard working staff of the Authority who rose through the ranks to occupy important positions, each of the two cranes has a productivity level of 144 keep working load at 12 meters from the vessel.

Briefing a section of the Tema press at the Tema port, where the two cranes were being offloaded, Mr. Paul Ansah Asare, Marketing and Public Relations Manager, Ghana Ports & Harbours Authority (GPHA) said each of the cranes can make about 40 moves per hour, if the twin spreader is fixed.

Mr. Ansah Asare stated: 'This will significantly help to improve the time set up to handle a vessel from the time of arrival; time waiting at the anchorage, navigation time and the time it takes to lift the containers at the berth.

'The mobile cranes are very versatile; they can offload both containers and general cargo. As at now, for example, we handle a container vessel now (2013) in six days compared to 7.2 days last year 2012.

'The arrival of these cranes is going to improve our turn round time further, and in 2014, we may be able to turn a ship around within four days' the GPHA PR Manager observed.

He explained that the Authority is determined to do whatever it takes to reduce the cost of doing business at the both the Tema and Takoradi ports and, therefore, the arrival of the cranes is very timely.

He hinted that as of now, the port of Tema is the most active container port in the whole of the West Africa sub-region, aside Nigeria.

According to him, whiles the ports of Abidjan and Dakar handled less than 700,000 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEUs) of containers in 2013, the port of Tema, within the same period handled over 830,000 TEUs.

Mr. Ansah Asare revealed that the Authority is looking at handling about 1 million TEUs in 2014, 'And our estimation is that in the next 15 years, we will handle two to three million TEUs'.

Another issue the Authority is looking at to enhance its capacity to handle more cargoes is the master of all expansion projects programme, which it has packaged and about to be rolled out.

He disclosed that last year, the Authority put out notice of tender for the project and those who bided asked for the extension of time from November 2013, to January, 2014 and 'So we gave them January 27 th when they will be submitting both their technical and financial proposals, which is part of the process of awarding of contract to start the expansion project'.

He continued that his outfit is gearing itself towards supporting the national economy, saying 'As the economy grows, we have to enhance our capacity to support both commerce and industry development, and that is exactly what we are doing'.

Ansah Asare assured importers and industrialists that his outfit has the capacity to support their activities to reduce the cost of doing business at the port, which is one of their topmost priorities as a port authority.

'We are determined to reduce the cost of doing business, trade and investment, and since transport cost constitutes a very huge percentage of the prices of goods and cost of investment, we are determined to offer that critical support for economic development in Ghana', he concluded.