In Port News 26/05/2015
Towering over the landscape like some prop from a futuristic Sci Fi movie, the massive orange gantry crane is the focal point of activity at the Duke Point terminal owned by Nanaimo Port Authority but operated by DP World. “It’s certainly a hard working piece of equipment,” explained Pamela Fry, DP World’s Duke Point Terminal Manager.
“The container crane was built in the early 1970s and was part of DP World’s Vancouver operation until it was purchased by the Nanaimo Port Authority (NPA). It now gives us the means to handle container cargo here in Nanaimo,” she explained.
“While Seaspan next door also moves containers, they move theirs on chassis, so ours is the only container port on Vancouver Island currently using a gantry crane to load containers directly onto barges or container ships.”
The hulking behemoth of a crane, towering some 45 meters tall, will be joined this summer by a higher lift capacity mobile harbor crane that will provide DP World with increased flexibility in handling cargo. While lightly used, the heavy lift Liehberr 500 crane has a capacity of 104 metric tonnes compared to the current 40 metric tonne gantry crane.
DP World is among the world’s largest operators of port facilities, with operations scattered all around the globe. At present the corporation (based in Dubai, UAE) operates more than 65 terminal facilities across six continents. The global entity operates facilities from India to Asia and across Europe and has more than 36,000 employees. Each year DP World moves more than 50 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent container units), and is anticipating that total of climb to more than 95 million within the next decade. DP World’s Canadian operations include Vancouver and the Nanaimo facility, which functions as a satellite to the Lower Mainland complex.
“The Duke Point operation may be one of the company’s smallest, but its reach is still global,” Fry explained.
The Duke Point Terminal covers more than 50 acres of land, 15 of which is paved terminal, storage and loading facilities. A lean, no nonsense operation, a handful of small buildings serve as basic offices and locker areas for the staff, with the vast majority of the space devoted to container and lumber storage and to the ongoing loading operations.
“We started in August 2012 with 2013 being our first year of actual operations,” Fry said. “In 2014 we moved an average of 2,000 TEU containers per month, an increase of 24 percent over 2013. In 2015 we’re anticipating that we will surpass that total.”
The Duke Point terminal features 170 meters of berthing space, and has a depth of 13.5 meters, allowing it to service large ocean going container ships. Aside from the gantry crane, the port also has a full range of forklifts and other cargo handling equipment. “The workforce goes up and down depending on the need,” she explained. “Normally we might have a dozen or more people working here daily (the minimum number needed to load a container barge), but when there’s a big job there could be 40 or 50 people working if there’s a ship in, it all depends on the job.”
Literature produced by DP World says the Nanaimo facility is expected to capture an estimated 50,000 TEU’s per year. A big portion of Fry’s job, aside from administering the bustling deep sea port, is to market the services of the facility.
“A facility like this can make the job of shipping goods far simpler, but you have to re-educate the clients on how to ship goods,” she said.
“On Vancouver Island there’s a truck and trailer tradition, that’s the only way goods had been shipped in the past. Now with the container port we have a cost effective, very reliable and more flexible option. Part of my job is to re-educate them, to provide them with the benefits of this service, to convert people from trucks and trailers into containers. It’s definitely a work in progress, but we’re getting there,” she explained.
“We expect our volumes to continue to increase. Our goal, my goal, is to see a reduced need to use truck and trailer / RoRo (Roll-On / Roll-Off) and see an increase in the use of containers to transport goods, reducing the impact on the environment and creating more demand for short sea shipping to ship goods between Vancouver Island and the rest of the world. That’s what this facility is all about.”
