New Sihanoukville Deep Sea Port Terminal Inaugurated

• 25 June 2018
• Local News
• 6126 Views

Sihanuokville sea port. Photo credit: MPWT

Speaking at the inauguration of the newly-built USD74 million multi-purpose terminal at the Sihanoukville autonomous port on 24 June, Senior Minister and Minister of Public Works and Transport (MPWT) H.E. Sun Chanthol announced the ministry’s plan to further expand the Sihanoukville deep sea port to become an intermediate-scale standard port with the capacity to handle more than 1 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) per year.

The expansion will be undertaken by building another new terminal which will be 14.5 metres deep with 350 metres of frontage. Together with the existing terminals, this new terminal will allow Sihanoukville sea port to be capable of receiving vessels of more than 60,000 tons or equal to about 93 percent of the whole number of vessels in Asia-Pacific by 2023.

In response to the year on year growth in trade, the government also plans to lower the crossing fee to the Cambodia Sea, which will make Cambodia’s logistic system become more competitive compared to neighbouring countries.

This new port is set to start construction by 2019 and is expected to be complete in early 2023.

The Sihanoukville autonomous port is currently being able to process more than 70 percent of the import and export logistics traffic in Cambodia.

According to H.E. Sun Chanthol, the number of containers at the Cambodian autonomous port has grown by an average of 12.6 percent or equal to 459,839 TEUs over the last five years. Meanwhile, for the first 5 months of 2018, the number of containers has reached 207,047 TEUs, seeing an increase of 19.6% compared to the first five months of 2017.

Construction on the newly-built terminal which was officially inaugurated on 25 June began in January 2015 and was completed in June this year. It was funded via a USD74 million shared fund between the government of Cambodia and the government of Japan via the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

This new terminal comprises of a 330-metre fronted retail terminal (13.5 metres deep), a 200-metre logistics supply for oil exploration (7.5 metres deep), and tugboat supplies. The terminal was constructed by TOYO Construction Co., Ltd and MAEDA Corporation of Japan and is under the technical supervision of Nippon Koei Co., Ltd and Oriental Consultants Global Co., Ltd. JV.