Hamad Port has accomplished yet another feat as it reached important milestone of handling over 3 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) containers on August 24. The port has also handled 7 million tons of general cargo since it began operations.
It has been an incredible journey for the $7.4bn port which began operation on December 2016. The port did not take much time to reach the one-million mark, as it celebrated the handling of its first one million TEUs containers in March last year. The Port had achieved this feat in less than 14 months, which was well ahead of its expected schedule.
The port had then set its sight on the next one-million mark and it did not take much time to reach there. The aim was to achieve the next one million container throughput by the end of 2018. As expected, the port touched this milestone well before schedule.
Expansion of the route network is one of the main factors behind stupendous growth in cargo handling. Within a short span of time, the port has been linked to 50 ports regionally and internationally in three continents.
In November last year, QTerminal announced that it had reached the major milestones of handling two million TEUs containers and five million tons of general cargo at the end of October 2018.
QTerminals is a terminal operating company jointly established by Qatar Ports Management Company (Mwani) and Qatar Navigation (Milaha). QTerminals at the moment operates Phase-I of the Hamad Port which consist of several facilities, including a container terminal (CT-1), a general cargo terminal that handles cars and other vehicles, heavy equipment and livestock, and other areas which is called offshore-supply services terminal to support the oil and gas industry.
The record-breaking journey of Hamad Port is expected to continue in future as the port has announced expansion plans. The development works of Phase II of the Hamad Port, which consist of a second container terminal (CT-2), has already begun. QTerminals has been awarded the design, develop and operation contract for the CT-2.
The port is playing a major role in securing the needs of local markets and projects implemented by Qatar and is also ensuring access of Qatari products to the global markets.
The Peninsula
27/09/2019
