APM, others plan multi-million dollar mega port at Badagry

Monday, 19 November 2012
By David Ogah


APM Terminals and its partners have announced plans to develop a multimillion dollar greenfield mega-port project and Free Trade Zone at Badagry, a suburb of Lagos State, 55 kilometres (34 miles) West of Apapa and the Port of Lagos.

At full build-out, the deep-water full-service port will be one of the largest in Africa, with seven kilometres of quay and 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) of dedicated yard, and will include state-of the art facilities for container, bulk, liquid bulk, Ro/Ro and general cargo as well as oil and gas operations terminal.

Plans for the adjoining Badagry Free Trade Zone will include a power plant, oil refinery, industrial park and warehousing and Inland Container Depot. The first phase of the project is scheduled to open in 2016.

The proposed Badagry mega port is being sponsored by a group of companies in consortium. They are APM Terminals, Orlean Invest, the Macquarie Group, Oando PLC, the Chagoury Group and Terminal Investment Limited.

“We are actively working with state and federal governments on the permission process,” said Regional Chief Executive Officer, APM Terminals Africa-Middle East, Peder Sondergaard, on Monday.

According to him, “the Nigerian Ports Authority, Lagos State and the Nigerian federal Government have been supportive and positive”.

Earlier this year, Nigeria’s Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar, cited the proposed Badagry Port project as an example of a public-private partnership development, which would help to address congestion and establish Nigeria as a maritime trading hub for West and Central Africa, during his keynote address at the 12th Maritime Seminar for Judges in Abuja in June.

The Lagos-Badagry Expressway is currently being upgraded to a 10-lane highway, which will facilitate cargo movements to and from inland destinations in the region.

APM Terminals is currently one of the largest port and terminal operators in Africa, and in West Africa in particular, where APM Terminals Global Terminal Network include nine facilities in eight West African nations, including Apapa Container Terminal, and West Africa Container Terminal in Onne, Nigeria.

APM Terminals Apapa, which assumed operations at Lagos’ Apapa Container Terminal in 2006, is now the busiest container terminal in West Africa, handling 600,000 TEUs in 2011, with throughput for 2012 projected to be 720,000 TEUs. Equally important, shipping lines and African shippers have seen significant improvements to supply chain reliability and cost savings.

Industry analysts have predicted that Nigerian container volume, which totaled 1.4 million TEUs in 2011, will outstrip existing port capacity by 2017. At present, approximately 85 per cent of all Nigerian non-oil cargo passes through the Port of Lagos. Over the next three decades, yearly container traffic may grow to 10 million TEUs.

With 170 million people, Nigeria is the largest country in Africa, and the seventh-largest worldwide. By 2050, the UN forecast that Nigeria’s population may rise to 289 million, following India, China, the USA and Pakistan in global population ranking.

Lagos is the second-largest city in Africa (after Cairo) with a population of 10.2 million, and is home to an estimated 60 per cent of Nigerian manufacturing.

The Nigerian economy, the second-largest in sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa, driven by oil exports, has been forecast by the International Monetary Fund to expand by 7.1 per cent in 2012 and 6.7 per cent in 2013.

The proposed Badagry Mega-Port project fits well into APM Terminals’ strategy of infrastructure development in targeted high-growth markets.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105275:apm-others-plan-multi-million-dollar-mega-port-at-badagry&catid=31:business&Itemid=562

Slowly but surely, this country is developing.

Odiegwu.

^^ ok

^^^^^^

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Nigeria o ni baje.