Ivory Coast has opened a second transhipment terminal at port of Abidjan. The first vessel to be officially handled at the terminal will be CMA CGM Ro
Ivory Coast has opened a second transhipment terminal at port of Abidjan. The first vessel to be officially handled at the terminal will be CMA CGM Rossini, a post-Panamax boxship with a capacity of 5770 TEU.
The Cote d’Ivoire Terminal (CIT) was developed in 2013 at a total cost of US $950million. China’s Exim bank and the government funded the project contributing 85% and 15% respectively. 45 hectares of land was reclaimed to create the new terminal.
Cote d’Ivoire Terminal (CIT)
The project involved construction of deepening and widening of the Vridi access canal. The terminal can accommodate new-generation vessels with a draft of 16 meters. It has a capacity to handle 1.5 million TEU annually.
The new terminal effectively transforms the Port of Abidjan into a transhipment hub, able to receive large vessels from Asia, Europe and America. Previously, some of the transhipment goods had to land in South Africa and then get transferred to West Africa using smaller vessels. With the new terminal operational, the Port Autonome d’Abidjan (PAA) estimates that Abidjan’s container traffic will increase from 1.2 million TEU to 3 million TEU per year. CIT is operated under a 20-year concession by a joint venture between Bollore Logistics (now affiliated with MSC Shipping) and APM Terminals, a subsidiary of AP Moller-Maersk.
“We are no longer a second port. We are becoming a hub. In addition to national traffic, we will handle traffic from other ports that cannot accommodate large vessels,” CIT Technical Director Andre N’Doli.