The Kribi port will eventually have an annual capacity in excess of 1 million TEU.
French ocean carrier CMA CGM and its consortium partners, Bolloré Transport & Logistics and China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), have signed a 25-year operating concession for a new container terminal in Cameroon’s Kribi port.
The capacity at Kribi should help improve productivity at Cameroon's primary gateway in Douala.
The new terminal, the African nation’s second complementing the existing facility in the port of Douala, will be able to handle container ships up to 8,000 TEU at its 350 m-wide (1,148.3 ft), 16 m-deep dock.
“The infrastructure and equipment comply with the best international standards,” CMA CGM said.
“The latest dock and gantry cranes will be put into service in the coming weeks so that operations can get start rapidly,” according to the French carrier, which says it ships more than 35 percent of containers to and from the West African coast.
The terminal will also provide direct connections to land-locked African nations such as Chad and the Central African Republic, CMA CGM said.
After a second phase expansion, the Kribi terminal will be able to handle ships up to 11,000 TEU at a 715-m dock with annual capacity of 1.3 million TEU. Cameroon economic growth
Cameroon’s GDP is expected to grow 4.8 percent this year, a slight slowdown from the 4.9 percent expansion last year, according to IHS Markit, which predicts that GDP growth will continue to slow gradually to 4.1 percent in 2020.
Growth in Cameroon’s exports of goods and services will slow to 7.3 percent this year compared with 12 percent last year as a result of lower prices for oil, cocoa, coffee, cotton, and timber. Imports of goods and services, on the back of capital goods imports, will resume growth, expanding 6.4 percent this year after a 2.1 percent contraction in 2016, IHS Markit forecasts.
Bolloré, a leading French logistics company, has been operating in Africa, including Cameroon, for over 50 years, and China’s CHEC has been involved in several infrastructure projects in the country.
The Kribi project is one of several mega-port projects in West Africa to build ports with more than 1 million TEU of annual capacity. Plans for a facility in Lekki, Nigeria, to relieve pressure on the congestion port facilities in Lagos, were recently dealt a setback when International Container Terminal Services Inc. pulled out of a concession agreement for the project.
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