New container terminal two years in operation on 24 August this year

Eileen van der Schyff

Namport’s container terminal on reclaimed land is soon celebrating 2 years of operation. The terminal was inaugurated by President Hage Geingob on 2 Augustus 2019, and operations started on 24 August 2019, coincidentally the same day that Namibia’s railways celebrated a centenary.

It required 602 229 working hours to complete the container terminal project, and since 5 million man-hours were worked on the terminal, accident-free. The container terminal is established on a 40-hectares man-made island that was constructed by the Chinese construction giant, China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC), and local subcontractors laboured a total of 31 383 hours on the project.
This man-made island was created on a bed of rocks hauled in from a stone quarry near Walvis Bay and the sediments used were partly obtained from dredging the immediate area around this future terminal. This resulted in this part of the port now 14,4 meters deep to accommodate larger container ships at the new terminal.

Some interesting trivia on this terminal: 6.2 km of communication ducts for fiber optic cabling, 5.1 km of electrical ducts, 41.4 km of electrical cables, 2.9 km of potable water pipes, 5.7 km of firefighting water pipes, 2 km of sewer lines, 6.2 km of stormwater pipes, 2,5 km of drainage channels, 756 manholes, 39 light masts, 3.74 million cubic meters of dredged sand used, 2.7 million cubic meters of heavy duty concrete interlocking blocks (all manufactured on site) – 297,992 square meters or 12 million blocks laid, 2.5 km of new railway lines, 40 ha land reclaimed, 3,7 km of palisade fencing, 1 km of movable fencing. The project used 11 excavators, 3 bulldozers, 41 tipper trucks, 6 front-end loaders, 2 mobile cranes, 8 concrete ready-mix trucks, 2 water trucks, 9 large crawler cranes, 4 roller compactors, 3 dredging vessels and 10 barges and workboats.