Tanga port cargo handling time cut
Tanga. Modernisation of Tanga Port took a great leap here after it acquired 80 per cent of earmarked new modern cargo handling equipment and machinery that enables it to cut cargo handling time to 12 hours.
Tanga Port manager Percival Salama said here that the port has already received 16 new cargo handling equipment out of the 20 that it has earmarked to receive in the 2018/2019 fiscal year.
Mr Salama told a group of 20 visiting journalists from Arusha and Kilimanjaro regions that the Tanzania Ports Authority has maintained its efforts to improve the performance of the port through acquiring new and modern port handling equipment and intensifying its marketing drive.
“The goal is to reduce the cost of doing business with the Tanga Port with a long term aim of raising the port to higher levels and making it the most important facility along the eastern Africa coast,” he added.
He explained that reduction of cargo handling time results in the port, shippers and cargo owners to avoid demurrage charges. According to available information, 65 per cent of costs that shippers incur at the port resulting from delays in handling cargo.
Mr Salama mentioned the new equipment that the port has so far acquired two new reachstackers, which, at a capacity to handle 45 tons each, have catapulted the port to the capacity to handle even the biggest cargo in the world.
Other equipment include two 100-ton Gottwald harbour mobile cranes and two harbour all terrain mobile cranes with a 45-ton capacity each.Other equipment 30 ton mobile crane, four wheel loaders, one 100-ton weighing machines and two forklifts, among others.
The Port manager further informed journalists that this was the first time the port had received a big consignment of equipment commending efforts of the fifth phase government, TPA under its director general Deusdedit Kakoko to modernise Tanga Port.
He also spoke of other activities going on at the port including expansion of the container area and a major rehabilitation of the port sheds that have the capacity to store 13,000 tons of cargo.
He described the rehabilitation as the first rehabilitation since the sheds were built in 1970s.
He urged Arusha and Kilimanjaro reporters to help in publicizing the new development at the port largely because the two regions have potentially a bigger number of customers using the port.
The visit follows another visit made by business communities of the two regions and they all were designed to encourage exporters and importers from those regions to use Tanga and as port of choice.
Journalists from those regions called on the port to use the media extensively to market their products in order to increase its customer base.
