Investment boost for Sines port

News-in-print 1 Sep 2016 by WCN Editorial

The port of Sines’s Terminal XXI concessionaire, PSA International, could invest a further €100M in developing its operations, on top of the €40M it invested last year to increase capacity from 1.7M TEU to 2.5M TEU. Just completed is the last phase of work to allow the berthing of feeders and other smaller ships, leaving the main 940m quay for use by larger vessels.

𝕏

Plans for the €100M package have not yet been firmed up, although the longerterm goal of PSA is to extend the main quay to 1,150m once existing capacity is exhausted. This is viewed by the port authority (APS) as being “desirable”.

In order to make a return on such an investment, PSA wants to extend its existing concession beyond the 2029 expiry date. APS allowed the previous €40M package to go ahead without demur because it was not linked to a longer concession request.

Now would be a good time to invest more money, said APS president João Franco, who believes that the port will receive a further 200 calls per year, thanks to the expanded Panama Canal. The impact on Sines is already being felt, he said.

In H1 2016, Sines saw total traffic grow by 10.5% to 24 Mt, and the port currently accounts for 53% of Portugal’s total maritime cargo (although most container traffic is transhipment cargo). It was the only port to post growth in the first half of this year. Significantly, Franco said that the damaging strikes at the Port of Lisbon had no effect on Sines – indeed the main beneficiaries were Leixões and Setúbal.

For this year, Franco’s most conservative forecast is a further 4% increase in traffic to 45.5 Mt. “There is no reason to believe that we won’t continue to grow – quite the opposite,” he said. “And this is across the board. We aren’t just talking about containers.” Last year, Sines handled almost 44 Mt, up 17% year-on-year. This equated to turnover of €44.6M, an increase of 9.2%. Profit shot up by 27.5% to €17M, and is expected to reach €17.9M this year.

Read this item in full
This complete item is approximately 300 words in length, and appeared in the September 2016 issue of WorldCargo News, on page 15. To access this issue download the PDF here.