I think you will find that the ship loader is very close to shore. The approach to get to the ship loader is around 23mts deep.The ship loader area is only a matter of a few hundred mts from shore. I don't think any dredging will have to be done for more ships to enter or build another ship loader. The terminal is set in + 15mts of water,in open sea. The jetty with ship loader would just need to be extended. Another way also would be to have the line the ship loader runs on to have two ship loaders,so a ship can be loaded on each side of the jetty.
The rail line will be adequate for a couple of years at least just for SDL. The rail track can be widened to a double track,so the passing areas along the rail corridor will be used as part of the second track.That way saving having to build the same amount of kilometers of new rail track as the first track. I discussed the above with Don Lewis at The 2009 AGM meeting. Rail is being built for a capacity of 50 million tonnes with one line.
Regards Westcott.
SDL Price at posting:
39.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
